2022 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

Question

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

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English Language Learners Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-08-01. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

Here’s how it’ll work:

• Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2022-08-01 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

• If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

• This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

• We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

  • How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
  • How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

• The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

  • In your opinion, what do moderators do?
  • A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
  • In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

• At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

  • We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
  • This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

Answer 1

On ELL, many regular users continue to post questions that show little to no research and quote expressions and sentence fragments from unattributed sources.

As a moderator what could you do to encourage users (old and new) to provide context and greater details in their questions (and answers)?

Answer 2

Under which circumstances would you, as a moderator, delete an on-topic answer that has attracted one or more upvotes?

Answer 3

ELL gets a lot of questions that seem to be ones we have answered many times before or which have been asked and answered on ELU or other places on the Internet. Do you have any ideas or thoughts you would like to share about the number of "duplicate" questions ELL gets and how much searching someone should be expected to do before asking a question?

Answer 4

What is your view on moderating comments? Do you consider comments ephemeral or do you feel certain comments should be retained? Under what circumstances do you think comments should be deleted or moved to a chat room?

Answer 5

What is your view on editing a question to correct grammar and style issues? Do you think we should edit answers differently from the way we edit questions?

Answer 6

Sometimes people post comments on ELL that attempt to answer a question, in whole or in part. How would you handle these comments?

Answer 7

Have you ever broken a rule on Stack Exchange and did you get caught? If you did break a rule (whether or not you were caught), how does that experience affect how you would go about enforcing Stack Exchange rules and policies?

If you haven't broken any rules, do you think someone who got away with breaking a rule in the past (but is currently a member in good standing) should be excluded from being a moderator? Why or why not?

Answer 8

What is your favourite ELL question and/or answer? Why?

Answer 9

Which of your contributions to ELL Meta do you feel best exemplifies your style as a moderator?

Answer 10

How well do you tend to get along with people on the site? In particular, what do you do when you feel a comment thread you're involved in is going south?

Answer 11

Do you have any thoughts you would like to share about the relationship between ELL and ELU or the migration path from ELU to ELL? In the past there have been discussions about the difference between the two sites, what sorts of questions belong on each site and complaints about low quality migrations.

Answer 12

Link to the post on ELL you’re most proud of contributing (yours), and tell us why.

_{The question is copied from a deleted post (only visible to 10k users) by Dan Bron}

Answer 13

Do you visit MSE, the Stack Exchange Meta site, and are you aware of its goings on?

As an elected moderator with added responsibilities; do you plan to focus your attention solely on ELL? Why or why not?

Answer 14

What are your criteria for what makes a good question? What qualities cause you to upvote questions? What qualities might cause you to downvote a question?

Answer 15

What is your view of a moderator's relationship to the company? The moderator agreement states:

I will accept additional guidance given by members of the Stack Exchange, Inc. Community Team and Senior Leadership Team, whether in response to questions, concerns or discussions regarding existing network-wide policies.

If there is a conflict between the guidance you receive from the company and what the community has expressed it wants, how will you handle it?

Answer 16

ELL's main chat room doesn't have much activity. What is your view of Stack Exchange chat? Do you think we should try to increase activity in our chat room? If so, what do you think we should try?

Answer 17

Do you think owning multiple accounts on one platform is justifiable–why? If you were elected, would you consider deleting or permanently suspending any multiple accounts you may have on ELL?

Answer 18

What ELL cliques do you consider yourself a part of? In what ways do ELL cliques hurt and/or help the site?