Is it common or desirable for moderators of one SE site to actively influence moderator elections of another site?

Question

I have recently observed a trend of with moderators of SE sites actively influencing moderator elections on sites they have minimal-to-none participation in as Q&A users (e.g. 1-10 posts over lifetime on the site).

Just to be clear, by "influencing", I do not mean constructive unbiased participation like offering sage advice in abstract about moderation based on their past experience being moderators, but actively endorsing/opposing specific candidates.

• Is this phenomenon common on SE as a whole?

• More importantly, is that considered desirable and why?

Answer 1

Is it common? Yes. I've been observing these elections for as long as they've existed, and in my experience there are users who will nearly always spark a comment from a moderator when they choose to run. Indeed, one particularly prolific serial-nominee has gotten comments from moderators on a wide array of sites where he's chosen to throw his hat in the ring - perhaps because he's made a point of demanding moderator attention on nearly every site where he participates, and thus is a familiar face to a good many moderators.

Is it desirable? Yes - as long as it's constructive. This goes for everyone else commenting during elections, of course. But for moderators, people who've pledged to be exemplary in their conduct, it is all the more important to set a good example. If a moderator praises a candidate, they should explain why in as much detail as possible; if they criticize, those criticisms should be grounded in actual experience - and whenever possible, such experience should be detailed in the comment rather than alluded to. Note that I explicitly DO NOT define "constructive" as "too vague to actually convey useful information", and I reject any notion that moderators - or anyone else - should attempt to remain impartial at the expense of being honest.

Elections are the one time and place where it is not just appropriate but desirable for members of the community to focus on the personalities and behavioral characteristics of individual members of the site. When choosing people to act on your behalf, it is beneficial to know as much as possible about how they are likely to behave in this role. For this purpose, it doesn't particularly matter who provides the information... As long as it is accurate.

Answer 2

Either you want the election process to be open and frank or you want it be about electing those you get along with in the chat room despite whatever personality flaws and misgivings are actually present.

When an election kicks off users of the site, however dormant, are invited to participate. Nominate, comment, vote, whatever. They're asked to be a part of it in whatever way they can.

How do you know a comment left on a candidate's nomination is attached to a moderator? By following their profile link, looking over it and then summarily dismissing it because you don't see their posts on the site all the time or you're not in chat hours on end with them.

Do they have an agenda? Depends on if you agree with their comments about the candidate or not.

Interference is not the right word here. That would suggest they are sitting in a room manipulating the STV ballots to disregard the whole show of comments here and there for and against.

Influence is the word you're looking for.

If bringing to light how bad or how good a candidate is by their behaviour on other parts of the network is enough to sway the votes, then yes, that would be wrong because now the election is no longer about voting in whatever user has the highest reputation. It would now be about how that user conducts themselves.

You can't be a jerk and break the rules on one site and think that it should not be counted against your character when running as a moderator on another.

Same as if you're helpful. Why should your track record of being diplomatic, level-headed and sane not be highlighted as to why you'd make a good moderator?

If moderators from other sites are creating accounts to leave comments on the election cycle then that's another story. And not the story that's being questioned here.

Answer 3

Moderator elections tend to draw some attention across the network, especially among users active on multiple SE sites and interested in the meta aspects of the network. So of course we sometimes talk about current elections in the moderator chat room, again raising awareness about the election.

I'm not surprised that moderators from other sites comment in another election, they might be familiar with the candidates even if they aren't especially active on this particular site. That can result in useful feedback. Many users are active across the network, so the boundaries tend to get a bit blurry here.

The comments on nominations are a pretty mixed bag. I'm not a fan of some of them, sometimes they are more about personal vendettas than anything else. But I think it is important that they exist and give a platform to challenge nominees, even if they're not all constructive. So I don't think we need any rules on who is allowed to comment there and who isn't, anything that isn't disruptive or against the "be nice" rule should be allowed there.

Answer 4

The facts

As I think I mentioned in a comment, it's hard to evaluate this properly without seeing concrete examples. I've gone over the Science Fiction & Fantasy election page, which I'm assuming is the source of this whole thing, and I've read all the comments that also appear to be the source of this. So I'll have to work off of those.

One user - who is a moderator on another site - wrote a comment on a user's nomination that was critical of said user. S/he brought up a point that I think is valid regarding the candidate's prior and current history and suspensions elsewhere on Stack Exchange.¹

There is another nomination that appears to have been another source of this. The same user who commented above commented here, as did other users, at least two of whom are moderators on other sites. In this case, the candidate did respond negatively, despite the fact that other users who are highly active on Science Fiction & Fantasy concurred with the criticisms.

I've also seen a couple other comments from users who are moderators on other sites, but they did not appear to have caused a stir. Additionally, of course, there were comments by Shog9, which have been discussed in detail in another meta question.

With the exception of the phrase "that I think is valid", the above is indisputable. I hope everyone can agree on that.

Response, Part 1

Without any prior knowledge of the situation - and it has been claimed that moderators are trying to twist the situation as viewed by outside observers - it would seem ridiculous that these comments should have caused such a stir. In the first case, the candidate did not respond nastily; in the second, it was clear that the candidate was not taking the criticism constructively, as a person reasonably should. Therefore, it should be clear that something is the problem.

Before I go on to what I'll say, I'd like reiterate what has been said by Mad Scientist and others:

• You don't have to be incredibly active on a site to give good advice in an election.
• Yes, moderators are commonly active on multiple sites and often have good network experience. They know what it's like to moderate.
• Moderators do not have the ability to wildly change the outcome of an election. Diamonds don't show up next to our names², so you have to either already know the user or go through their profile to find out. Most users do neither, I would imagine.

The above seems reasonable, no? There have been disagreements about what I've written in the last bullet, and the debate can never be 100% proven. But I would hope that common sense supports it.

Response, Part 2

This stuff may be a bit controversial, as it diverges from the previous two sections. Some of it is a bit blunt, I warn you. Additionally, it is a meta-Meta view of the situation.

Lemma #1: There is an "us-vs.-them" mentality at work here.

This should be easily apparent, no matter whether or not it is justified. There is clearly a group of users who are attempting to cultivate this mentality by isolating the moderators as another group. There are negative implications associated with their claims, including

• Voting rings.
• Trying to negatively effect democratic voting.

Read through the comments, and some of these will pop up.

Lemma #2: There is polarization.

The eventual result of Lemma #1 will be polarization, which is, interestingly enough, one of the 8 stages of genocide - although I would argue that it is present in any conflict. However, I think it has existed from the beginning. There's been a slew of meta issues on Meta Stack Exchange and Science Fiction & Fantasy meta. I'm not trying to connect specific users or implicate anyone in past wrongdoings or blow things out of proportion. But I think this is the case.

Lemma #3: There are other motivations at work here.

Here is where I'm venturing into deep water - and I'm a terrible swimmer. I'm in deep because I'm saying that users who are making some of these accusations are annoyed about past disputes. This is not the case for everyone who thinks a certain way - of course not. But it is the case that there are people who are supporting the accusations because they do not like what has happened in the past.

Section conclusion

Putting the three lemmas together - and regrettably, they are not lembas - the conclusion can be drawn that this is a complaint that has arisen not because of the comments on the election page. I know; a lot of people here already knew this. But I'm going to state it fully, and draw heavily from Lemma #3.

That's all well and good, but I stated something that many people already know or think. That's not productive. What is productive is a solution.

Is there a solution? After all, I claim to be dredging up an old problem that clearly has not been solved in the past. There may not be anything good that will come out of this thread - well, maybe and maybe not. Good answers have already been written. So I'll boil it all down to one thing:

Moderators are not malicious.

This has escalated from a couple of comments on some election nominations to a full-blown Meta Stack Exchange thread. It has escalated because assumptions were made of continuous ill will and automatic maliciousness. It has escalated because people continue to think that Stack Exchange is out to get them. It has escalated because people will not think about the situation in and of itself, but only look at it under the lens of biased perception.

This can be stopped in the future, by people not assuming that anytime a moderator is critical of a user - even outside the site they moderate - the moderator is being critical. This only leads to ugly disputes.

So, please, can we let the past be the past on Science Fiction and Fantasy, and let moderators who have never been involved in disputes there actually do something productive without getting pounced on? That's the point my answer is making about this specific discussion. People were trying to be helpful, and they were succeeding. Unless their actions get blown up, they can continue to be successful.

Just as is the case with CMs, I think there is no issue here.

---

^{1 The candidate appears to have commented in return, and neither party has attacked the other.
2 Yes, I am a moderator on HSM and Mythology.}

Answer 5

First off, I'm not certain which users you're actually referring to. The vast majority of comments on the nomination page seem to come from regular users. I see a couple of users with <1k rep on SFF commenting on the election, but I only saw two who are also moderators on other sites.

From some comments you made, it seems this involves some discussion in chat that I am not aware of, but it isn't necessarily relevant to your questions here.

As you know, I ran for moderator in SFF twice, and I'm pretty familiar with the site (excepting the events of the past year, since I largely stopped participating on SE sites just over a year ago; however, I do still lurk on SFF, and know the general shape of the major events of the past year).

From my perspective, I felt that during the elections, there was a lot of activity from users who weren't terribly active on SFF. Most of those users were not moderators on other sites.

In both elections, I felt rather strongly that the vast majority of the votes were from people who don't have a ton of visible participation on the site.

There are what, less than hundred users on SFF with 10k rep? And quite a few of them aren't active anymore. There seem to be even fewer with between 5k and 10k rep.

So I suspect a lot of the voters fit your criteria for a "red flag", yet aren't moderators on other sites:

How many times have the user posted on Meta? Zero? How many moderation activities have they done on a site? Zero? That's a red flag to me that their motivation is other than concern for the community.

Hell, I'd venture to say that that's most of the voters, on every SE site's election, and very few are likely there because they moderate on other sites.

I haven't been a moderator on an SE site for over a year. I was never an elected moderator. I wasn't strongly active in the "diamond gang" gnat refers to. Yet I downvoted this question because I disagree with the premise, and not because of some conspiracy to downvote it off the Meta front page.

So: do moderators "interfere" with elections on sites they're not active on? No, not really. Do they sometimes make comments? Yes, but so do users who aren't moderators on other sites.

Is there an undue amount of influence on elections from moderators from other sites, through some sort of conspiracy? I don't believe so. Quite frankly, if there was, I feel I would have done better in the two elections I participated in, since I was "in that crowd" at the time, and each time I ranked behind candidates who weren't moderators on any other site. They certainly deserved the results they got, and I feel I deserved the results that I got from each election, too.