23
$\begingroup$

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

Physics Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2021-07-26. 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 2021-07-26 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.

$\endgroup$

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
9
$\begingroup$

Are there any PSE site policies that you find insufficient for the problem they try to solve, superfluous, or even actively harmful to the site? In the case where these policies cannot/will not be changed, how will you make sure to adhere to and promote these policies despite not agreeing with them?

$\endgroup$
8
$\begingroup$

What are major challenges specific to PSE?

$\endgroup$
5
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Are you asking this within some context? e.g. compared to other Stack Exchange sites, other physics-help sites, etc.? The use of the word "specific" makes it seem like you are wanting to exclude some subset of challenges that PSE has but that other things have as well. $\endgroup$
    – BioPhysicist
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 17:33
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ @BioPhysicist PSE presumably has challenges that - says - MSE or AcademiaSE do not. This could also be compared to other physics help sites. I mean the question to be broad. I’m comfy with multiple interpretations. $\endgroup$
    – ZeroTheHero
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 17:40
  • $\begingroup$ Interesting someone would down vote this without explaining why haha. $\endgroup$
    – BioPhysicist
    Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 20:34
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Why would this be a good question to judge potential moderators? What's the connection to moderation? $\endgroup$
    – Norbert Schuch
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 21:12
  • 7
    $\begingroup$ @NorbertSchuch I would prefer moderators who have a good grasp on the PSE site as a whole and who have thought somewhat critically about the site. $\endgroup$
    – BioPhysicist
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 21:24
5
$\begingroup$

What, if anything, would you do with a user who posts a steady stream of polite answers that derail questions to talk about their own personal theories, while not technically breaking any rules?

$\endgroup$
4
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Can you clarify this or give an example? If an answer derails a question in most cases wouldn't it be down voted, flagged, or deleted? Plus answers about personal theories usually don't fully address the question and get downvoted / deleted as well. $\endgroup$
    – BioPhysicist
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 17:12
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @BioPhysicist Hmm, I think jumping to examples would be unwise. Anyway, because people tend to be generous with voting, and there are a lot of low-scoring questions that are not often seen by established users (who are the primary suppliers of downvotes), users that fit my description often have positive total score, and always positive reputation. $\endgroup$
    – knzhou
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 17:26
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Fair enough about giving specific examples. I am still having a hard time imagining an answer like this though. IMO "derail" means it doesn't really answer the question. Maybe I am not interpreting "derail" as you intended it. $\endgroup$
    – BioPhysicist
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 17:30
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I think this is a great question and can think of several examples immediately where it was relevant. $\endgroup$
    – Brick
    Commented Jul 22, 2021 at 1:58
4
$\begingroup$

How well do you think your previous behavior and actions on PSE have aligned with current PSE site policies? Do you think this will change at all if you are a moderator, and if so, how?

$\endgroup$
4
$\begingroup$

Site policies need interpretation and interpretation of rules is never like proving a mathematical theorem. Moderators could play an important role in maintaining coherence in the interpretation of the site policies. However, elected moderators should act as an expression of their community. Do you think discussions here in Physics Meta could help? In the case of a positive answer, do you think this mechanism could or should be improved? How? In the case of a negative answer, why?

$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .