What to do to boost your chances of becoming an SO moderator?

Question

Although my account is fairly new on SO, I've been using the site since I started programming about a year ago and as I've gotten increasingly active, I would love to get more involved with the site. My end game is to end up becoming a diamond moderator on SO. Now, I know this kind of thing doesn't happen overnight, or even in the span of a year or two, but I am very eager to work towards this.

What are some of the best things that can be done to work towards this goal?

Obviously, asking good questions and giving good answers is one of the most important things. What I want to know is if there are things that would stand out more than others (badges that mean more than others, rep gain per day, etc). Or even things that aren't related to SO directly. I just would like to know how I could get more involved in maintaining/moderating the site currently and what I could do that would make me stand out and help me achieve my goal. Thanks in advance for any tips!

The reason that I want to be a moderator is because I want to be able to give back to the site. Stack Overflow has quite literally saved me over 100 times in the past year alone and I want to help maintain the site so that everyone else can get just as much out of it as I can. What I didn't realize is that it is already very easy to do so and I will definitely begin to help out more by flagging posts and becoming more involved in meta.

Answer 1

Obviously, asking good questions and giving good answers is one of the most important things.

Actually, no. High rep is not an indicator of someone being a good moderator.

What is?

• Meta participation, in particular on items to do with building up the community and how the network works
• Good communication with others - commenting constructively, for instance
• Correct and prolific flagging and reviewing

In short - you need to show to the community that you are already an active moderator and that you will be a good one.

Once a moderator election comes, you can submit yourself for it. There are several stages to a moderator election, so you need support from the community (hence, lots of participation and constructive participation is paramount).

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See There's an election going on. What's happening and how does it work? for details of how an election works.

Answer 2

My end game is to end up becoming a diamond moderator on SO.

I'd argue that this is not the right attitude to have. Too many people look at being a moderator on one of the Stack Exchange sites as a trophy to be won, or some kind of badge of success. This has caused problems during previous elections on Stack Overflow, as high-rep users nominated themselves to be moderator simply because that was the only award they hadn't won on the site.

Moderators, particularly on Stack Overflow, are glorified janitors (with a little policeman thrown in). We are volunteers who deal with the worst content the site offers, and have to manage cheaters, spammers, trolls, and other bad actors every day. The community handles almost all of the actual moderation duties on the site, with us being called in when they aren't able to deal with something.

Focus on being a positive contributor first. Almost all of the best people on the site aren't moderators. They're the ones who go out of their way to help others, or take on the thankless tasks of voting to close terrible questions or flagging inappropriate content. They come on Meta and are polite and helpful to new users who don't understand the site. We need more people like this.

Build reputation through asking and answering questions, and you'll soon have access to powerful tools for moderating content yourself. Only when you start spending much of your time cleaning up the site and feel that you could do much more than these tools allow should you seriously contemplate being a moderator. For example, if you find yourself flagging lots of things that you can't deal with on your own, that could be a good sign that you're right for the position.

Reputation isn't everything, though, as both Tim Post and Adam Lear got many more votes when they were elected on SO than people with a lot more reputation on the site. They had demonstrated to the community that they could moderate well, despite not being the most prolific answerers. It's not a coincidence that they're both employed by SE now.

The moderator candidates that I vote for each election are the ones who can give the best response to the question "Why do you want to be a moderator?" That reason needs to be something more than because you think it would be an honor.

Answer 3

The only thing you actually have to do is to convince enough users to vote for you. There are many ways to do that, I'll just list some aspects that I think are important.

• You need to convince us that you actually care about the site, that you aren't in it for the badges and the (non-existent) glory. The primary motivation to become a moderator should be to improve the site and help the community to develop.

• You should display good judgement, a moderator shouldn't cause more trouble than the users he is suspending. A moderator should deescalate a situation, and not pour more oil into the fire. As a moderator you have some rather powerful tools at your disposal. We, the community, should have the impression that we can trust you to use them wisely.

• The primary duty of a moderator is pretty much that of a janitor. You should have a good record of editing, closing and flagging posts. Even without the diamond you can perform a large number of moderation duties, we'd like to see that you already use the tools at your disposal before you are elected.

Answer 4

You can get some insight into what is important by looking at the pages for past elections. For example, the most recent SO election indicates that, specifically on that site, you must have four particular badges. On all sites' election pages, the "at a glance" stats shown for each candidate include meta participation (number of questions and anaswers and total votes for each) and the number of helpful flags, and if you drill into candidate details you'll see several badges that are listed. Except on SO none of that is required, but it's a good indicator of what's important to voters.

Reputation probably does matter some (beyond the small threshold required to run at all), but it's not the biggest factor. Participation matters -- how regularly, how long, how controversially, how politely, and so on. And, as noted here and by Oded, meta participation and flagging are important ways to show that you are involved with the site itself and not just certain questions or tags.