Reading the question reminded me of something Joel wrote about interviewing:

On the other hand, if you reject a good candidate, I mean, I guess in some existential sense an injustice has been done, but, hey, if they're so smart, don't worry, they'll get lots of good job offers.

There will be more elections in the future and there are plenty of other sites where people might be appointed or elected as a diamond moderator. If our stupid criteria eliminates some ideal candidates, that's unfortunate, but not tragic.

The nomination period is actually a lot more like sorting resumes, though. During the primary phase we will be asking tens of thousands of people on Stack Overflow to have an opinion on 30 candidates. That reminds me of the exercise I used to do everytime I had a meeting at the previous job: estimating how much the meeting costs. If each nomination take, say, 1 minute to read and all 21,571 people who voted have one more nomination to consider, that works out to 15 days of programmer productivity. Yeah, it's a meaningless calculation in oh so many ways, but my point is that we owe it to the voters to narrow down the list somehow.

That said, I like your suggestion of swapping reputation for candidate score is a good one. Reputation alone mostly captures a candidate's investment in the site. The other components get at a candidate's aptitude and enthusiasm for tasks that are more typical for a moderator.

Reading the question reminded me of something Joel wrote about interviewing:

On the other hand, if you reject a good candidate, I mean, I guess in some existential sense an injustice has been done, but, hey, if they're so smart, don't worry, they'll get lots of good job offers.

There will be more elections in the future and there are plenty of other sites where people might be appointed or elected as a diamond moderator. If our stupid criteria eliminates some ideal candidates, that's unfortunate, but not tragic.

The nomination period is actually a lot more like sorting resumes, though. During the primary phase we will be asking tens of thousands of people on Stack Overflow to have an opinion on 30 candidates. That reminds me of the exercise I used to do everytime I had a meeting at the previous job: estimating how much the meeting costs. If each nomination take, say, 1 minute to read and all 21,571 people who voted have one more nomination to consider, that works out to 15 days of programmer productivity. Yeah, it's a meaningless calculation in oh so many ways, but my point is that we owe it to the voters to narrow down the list somehow.

That said, I like your suggestion of swapping reputation for candidate score is a good one. Reputation alone mostly captures a candidate's investment in the site. The other components get at a candidate's aptitude and enthusiasm for tasks that are more typical for a moderator.

Reading the question reminded me of something Joel wrote about interviewing:

On the other hand, if you reject a good candidate, I mean, I guess in some existential sense an injustice has been done, but, hey, if they're so smart, don't worry, they'll get lots of good job offers.

There will be more elections in the future and there are plenty of other sites where people might be appointed or elected as a diamond moderator. If our stupid criteria eliminates some ideal candidates, that's unfortunate, but not tragic.

The nomination period is actually a lot more like sorting resumes, though. During the primary phase we will be asking tens of thousands of people on Stack Overflow to have an opinion on 30 candidates. That reminds me of the exercise I used to do everytime I had a meeting at the previous job: estimating how much the meeting costs. If each nomination take, say, 1 minute to read and all 21,571 people who voted have one more nomination to consider, that works out to 15 days of programmer productivity. Yeah, it's a meaningless calculation in oh so many ways, but my point is that we owe it to the voters to narrow down the list somehow.

That said, I like your suggestion of swapping reputation for candidate score is a good one. Reputation alone mostly captures a candidate's investment in the site. The other components get at a candidate's aptitude and enthusiasm for tasks that are more typical for a moderator.

Reading the question reminded me of something Joel wrote about interviewing:

On the other hand, if you reject a good candidate, I mean, I guess in some existential sense an injustice has been done, but, hey, if they're so smart, don't worry, they'll get lots of good job offers.

There will be more elections in the future and there are plenty of other sites where people might be appointed or elected as a diamond moderator. If our stupid criteria eliminates some ideal candidates, that's unfortunate, but not tragic.

The nomination period is actually a lot more like sorting resumes, though. During the primary phase we will be asking tens of thousands of people on Stack Overflow to have an opinion on 30 candidates. That reminds me of the exercise I used to do everytime I had a meeting at the previous job: estimating how much the meeting costs. If each nomination take, say, 1 minute to read and all 21,571 people who voted have one more nomination to consider, that works out to 15 days of programmer productivity. Yeah, it's a meaningless calculation in oh so many ways, but my point is that we owe it to the voters to narrow down the list somehow.

That said, I like your suggestion of swapping reputation for candidate score is a good one. Reputation alone mostly captures a candidate's investment in the site. The other components get at a candidate's aptitude and enthusiasm for tasks that are more typical for a moderator.