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The 2019 Community Moderator Election is now underway!

Community moderator elections have three phases:

  1. Nomination phase
  2. Primary phase
  3. Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.

Please visit the official election page at

https://physics.stackexchange.com/election

for more detail, and to participate!

If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged .

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Your Phys.SE community needs you.

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I suspect there may be a lot of people self-selecting themselves out of running because they think that they don't quite have enough experience with the community moderation ─ in a large cohort of users that I think are perfectly qualified. I, for one, feel that there are a lot of users in, say, the 5k - 15k rep bracket, and with, say, about one to three years of experience on the site, who would be excellent moderators.

Please don't leave the community moderation to the same old faces! There's a lot of highly opinionated users who are very visible on meta and other community-moderation mechanisms (cough), but I would bet that there's a substantial fraction of our experienced user base (where by "experienced" I mean roughly "has had 3k+ and been reasonably active on the Close queue for longer than a year") who would offer extremely valuable perspectives that would do a lot of good in broadening how the broader site community is represented in the day-to-day moderation.

If you feel that you have a good grasp on how the site moderation works, then please consider running!

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  • $\begingroup$ I'd run if I thought I had half an hour a day to give to this site. The thing is, when I do actually have time to spend, I want to spend it generating content, not moderating :-( $\endgroup$ – DanielSank Apr 28 at 21:02
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Does anybody get the impression that our questionnaire might be turning people away? I can think of a couple of users with ~10k rep who are reasonably active in review queues (and general close voting), post editing, and duplicate votes, but have no/very little meta and chat presence. However, we have three questions (questions 3, 8, and 10 in the questionnaire) which are about these matters: two are about well- and poorly-recieved meta posts, while the other is about chat (and two of those three questions were my suggestions, but whatever). If someone feels that they won't be able to put together significant answers for three out of ten questions, they may be considering themselves bad fits for the position.

I personally feel that these people would make fine moderators: if they're participating in reviews, they probably have a good enough idea of the policies regarding the scope, so they'll be able to help meta discussions once they're moderators. And some of our present moderators are not very active on chat: some pop in occasionally to make sure that things are going smoothly, and some are barely ever in the room.

If this is the case, is there a way to somehow tell people that it's possible to be a competitive candidate with 'null' answers for those questions, as long as they can show their contributions in some other way?

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  • $\begingroup$ Well, one of those questions says "Alternatively, do you feel that you've contributed significantly towards some other aspect of site maintenance..." so if someone can't say something there either, they may actually be poor fits for the role. $\endgroup$ – user191954 Apr 27 at 13:52
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So... the elephant in the room? The nomination phase is almost over, and we have no candidates. Shouldn't we be concerned? What happens if nominations close and no one decides to run for moderation? Can we, the rest of users, nominate someone else and hope they'll agree?

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    $\begingroup$ #KevinForPresident #Zhou2019 #YesMyModerator $\endgroup$ – AccidentalFourierTransform Apr 26 at 15:31
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    $\begingroup$ Pretty sure Kevin said in the chat room that he would not run. $\endgroup$ – Kyle Kanos Apr 26 at 15:38
  • $\begingroup$ I'm not going in, you two are both better (and less lazy) candidates than me! $\endgroup$ – knzhou Apr 26 at 16:18
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    $\begingroup$ But there are some awesome candidates in the ~10k rep range... $\endgroup$ – knzhou Apr 26 at 16:19
  • $\begingroup$ After my (narrow? I actually don't remember) defeat last time, I don't think I'm going to nominate myself unless asked or there was support for it. If the community would have wanted me to do it, I wouldn't have lost last time! $\endgroup$ – tpg2114♦ Apr 26 at 23:33
  • $\begingroup$ @knzhou: you'd be perfect. Go for it. You know you want to. Take one for the team. $\endgroup$ – John Duffield Apr 27 at 9:06
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    $\begingroup$ @tpg2114 Honestly I was wondering if some candidates from the previous election would run again. It was quite a strong slate. $\endgroup$ – ZeroTheHero Apr 28 at 0:23
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    $\begingroup$ @tpg2114 I'd ask, although I see you just posted a nomination, so... thanks! Missing out on getting elected one time doesn't mean much about your suitability to be a mod - there are always a limited number of spots and consequently a certain amount of arbitrariness in who gets picked, so I wouldn't read too much into it. $\endgroup$ – David Z♦ Apr 28 at 18:08
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    $\begingroup$ While the question is now moot since it's now on voting phase: if there were not enough candidates (available positions+1), the nomination phase would be extended by 1 week. If there were still not enough candidates after that, the election would be canceled. (based on my experience seeing failed election more than 2 times) $\endgroup$ – Andrew T. Apr 30 at 0:19
  • $\begingroup$ @AndrewT. Thanks for the info! $\endgroup$ – AccidentalFourierTransform Apr 30 at 0:24
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Can someone clarify why this election is being held? Is it something that happens automatically every so often, or did the existing moderators request it (either because they feel swamped or for some other reason?

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    $\begingroup$ The existing moderators requested it to replace Manishearth and because of increase in traffic since the 2016 election. $\endgroup$ – Qmechanic♦ Apr 27 at 22:49
  • $\begingroup$ @Qmechanic : Thanks. $\endgroup$ – WillO Apr 27 at 23:27

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