2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection [closed]

Question

Software Engineering Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election starting next week, February 25th. In connection with that, we will be hosting a Q&A here for 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.

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

Normally, this is the part of the announcement where I mention how we changed the Q&A thread process some time in 2017, but y'all haven't actually had an election since we began the system in around 2014. Y'all still had Town Hall Chats. This is basically a replacement for those, and here's a breakdown of how the process works:

• Until the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, February 25th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 3:00 pm EST 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.

• We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

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

• 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.

• At the end of the collection 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. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.

• Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, containing (up to) 10 questions in total.

• 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.

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

Note: We are looking for two new moderators.

Answer 1

In your opinion, what is the biggest problem/challenge Software Engineering is currently facing? How would you propose to solve it?

Answer 2

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

_{Taken from the optional questions of @GraceNote as I think it has merit enough to be asked anyway.}

Answer 3

Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

• 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?

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• 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?

Answer 4

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?

_{Taken from the optional questions of @GraceNote as I think this is relevant due to using your current account and not "getting a new one".}

Answer 5

And once you will stop being moderator (whenever, whyever), you will lose that diamond and everything you wrote as a moderator will look like you answered as a normal member.

How do you take that into concern while being active as moderator / how do you feel about that?

_{Added the other way round as I think this goes vice versa. If you feel otherwise, I (or you) can edit the other question, give me a hint and I delete this one.}