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

Mathematics Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2024-08-06. 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 2024-08-06 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 enough reputation to access moderator tools or become a trusted user?

  • 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.

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If you had to change any of math.se's community-specific policies and precedents, what would you choose, and what would you hope to achieve by this change?

Here, "community-specific" refers to practices only in place on math.se, not the network at large. Some examples would be how we define context, how we enforce against lack of context (both asking and answering), community norms around and , "hint" answers, etc.

I propose this question because it shows the candidate's knowledge and opinion of local policy, and provides insight on what they hope to achieve using their influence as a moderator.

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Math.SE seems to, in practice, fulfill dual purposes: to be a repository of mathematical knowledge in a Q&A format, and a place for people to get specialist, individual help with mathematics. Often these purposes align, but sometimes they clash. Which do you see as the primary purpose of MSE? What influence do you anticipate this might have on your actions as moderator?

[ A similar version of this question was asked in the prior moderator election and led to responses that seemed informative to me. ]

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What has your involvement in moderation issues looked like in the past? For example, have you helped maintain particular tags, been active in review queues, or provided help on meta? How do you see this changing as you step in to a more official role?

(I asked this last election here.)

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An effective question has always been:

What is/are the most pressing issue(s) on Mathematics Stack Exchange and how will you address it/them as a moderator?

Answers to this question will:

  • Give insight into the nominee’s knowledge of the site. Current and ongoing site issues are good to know about as that will help the moderator focus their attention to more important problems

  • Provide details on the nominee’s moderation strategies; people have different ways of dealing with problems in the community. Additionally, being aware of how people will deal with community problems will help others imagine/predict how they will act if elected. For example, not communicating with the moderator team about controversial decisions will be a clear sign of poor moderation skills.

  • Be able to be used a test of the nominee’s motivation and willingness to moderate. For example, vague or less detailed answers may signal that the nominee does not fully know what they plan to solve or how to do so.

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There might be people disagreeing with my view. But here is my question for our candidates. First, it needs some motivation. Over my few years at this site, I have noticed the following two trends. Because of these trends, I now spend very little time on the site and am not as enthusiastic about answering questions as I was a few years ago.

Decline in the quality of new questions: In the past, I enjoyed looking at new questions and often wondered why I hadn't thought of them before. Most of those questions were formulated out of genuine curiosity. Nowadays, most questions are plain, dry, and resemble typical homework problems.

Lack of quality answers: There is a noticeable shortage of people capable of writing quality answers. Knowledge alone is not enough; the willingness to invest time in crafting well-thought-out responses is also important. In the past, I have learned many interesting things by reading answers. Now, I mostly see a bunch of bounty hunters waiting for someone to post simple questions.

What steps can be taken to improve the quality of new questions and encourage expert users to invest time in providing well-crafted answers on the site?

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Do you have any particular philosophies on moderation or curation that might set you apart from other candidates or current moderators?

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    $\begingroup$ The second half of the question is better omitted as the first candidate to nominate will be completely speculating and the final candidate to nominate will have all the information they need. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 22:21
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    $\begingroup$ Anyone running for mod probably should have an idea of the issues that are in play on math.se, the range of opinions on them, and where their personal positions sit in that range. If they don't, I'd question whether or not they should be going for the position of moderator. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 23:00
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    $\begingroup$ @TheSimpliFire, I hope that my revision has addressed your feedback. If not, I would welcome a proposed wording change. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 31, 2024 at 17:46

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