My initial reaction to this is that the only reason nominations should be private for a period is to allow the company to reject nominations from people they do not want to be moderators without humiliating them in front of the community by withdrawing their nomination after it has been posted.

I want candidates to be able to update their posts in response to questions and feedback from the community, not have all of that buried in comments. I don't think making candidates write their nomination posts without knowing what other people are writing would make the election process better. I want candidates to compete with each other and to differentiate themselves from the other nominees and they can't do that without seeing what other candidates are asserting.

The people who nominate early and respond to questions and clarify their positions on things have an advantage over last minute candidates who aren't that engaged (at least when it comes to my vote). I think waiting until the last minute to put in a nomination is a non-issue. Deciding to run for moderator can require a lot of thought. Sometimes seeing how other candidates are planning to moderate can make someone want to offer an alternative when they hadn't initially planned on standing for the position.

We can change our votes as often as we like prior to the deadline, so discussion of a candidate's qualifications should not stop once voting starts. Candidates should be allowed to campaign right up until the end of voting. Nomination posts aren't contracts or requirements documents that need to be settled before we agree to them. If we could follow elections we could get notified of updates to a candidate's nomination post and adjust our votes accordingly.

The plagiarism thing does not merit a change to the election process. It is easily detected and corrected. In my opinion, it would disqualify a candidate from being a moderator. Communication is a very important part of moderation. If someone isn't comfortable enough expressing their ideas in English without copying phrasing from other people, I don't think I could in good conscience vote for them to be a moderator.

The only reason I can think of off the top of my head that nominations should be private for a period is to allow the company to reject nominations that are problematic for some readers without humiliating the nominee in front of the community.

In light of the issues around the 2021 election on ELL, I am a bit more supportive of the company and current site mod team knowing who has nominated themselves prior to the community at large knowing. Maybe it would have enabled the issues around a particular nomination to have been resolved before the election.

I still don't think it's a good idea to prevent all updates to the post that is a candidate's most visible way to communicate with voters. I could accept a compromise and say "you can only add to it", but I think it wouldn't add much value over just letting candidates edit.

I want candidates to be able to update their posts in response to questions and feedback from the community, not have all of that buried in comments. I don't think making candidates write their nomination posts without knowing what other people are writing would make the election process better. I want candidates to compete with each other and to differentiate themselves from the other nominees and they can't do that without seeing what other candidates are asserting.

The people who nominate early and respond to questions and clarify their positions on things have an advantage over last minute candidates who aren't that engaged (at least when it comes to my vote). I think waiting until the last minute to put in a nomination is a non-issue. Deciding to run for moderator can require a lot of thought. Sometimes seeing how other candidates are planning to moderate can make someone want to offer an alternative when they hadn't initially planned on standing for the position.

We can change our votes as often as we like prior to the deadline, so discussion of a candidate's qualifications should not stop once voting starts. Candidates should be allowed to campaign right up until the end of voting. Nomination posts aren't contracts or requirements documents that need to be settled before we agree to them. If we could follow elections we could get notified of updates to a candidate's nomination post and adjust our votes accordingly.

The plagiarism thing does not merit a change to the election process. It is easily detected and corrected. In my opinion, it would disqualify a candidate from being a moderator. Communication is a very important part of moderation. If someone isn't comfortable enough expressing their ideas in English without copying phrasing from other people, I don't think I could in good conscience vote for them to be a moderator.