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Due to a continual and ever-growing stream of mod flags, and a desire to be respectful of the time existing moderators are contributing to our community, I propose we add one new moderator to each classic trilogy site.

So, I submit for your disapproval:

on Stack Overflow:

Will and mmyers (who came in 3rd and 4th in our 2010 election)

on Super User:

Gnoupi

on Server Fault:

Chopper3

I believe each of these users has exhibited exemplary and moderator-worthy behavior on meta and on their respective sites.

As such, I would like to appoint them as moderators, if the community approves.

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  • 4
    Does this mean there are not going to be moderator elections any more? (Not opposed to neither of the three people suggested, nor necessarily to the way they were suggested. Just curious.)
    – Pekka
    Jul 9, 2010 at 9:42
  • 2
    @pekka we have some urgent needs. The plan is to hold elections, but I am not convinced SU/SF yet have the giant audiences necessary to get a quorum in an election... and we haven't built election support into our codebase yet, have we? But we should!
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 9, 2010 at 9:44
  • 1
    @Jeff you know that an election mechanism would in fact implement a polling mechanism? :p
    – Tobias Kienzler
    Jul 9, 2010 at 10:13
  • I can't find my original nomination post, so let me quickly sum it up: Mod at DotNetKicks for years (one of the first mods if not the first). I hate spammers, like a good combative argument. Not interested in swinging my iJunk around; I am happy to give back to the community that has given me so much.
    – user1228
    Jul 9, 2010 at 14:19
  • 4
    I'm glad you're expediting this by bypassing the nomination/election process this time around. The elections are fun, but we've been buried in mod flags on SO lately. A little more help will be much appreciated.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:14
  • 1
    @Wil, did an aggressive spell-checker perhaps replace the word, "constructive" or perhaps,"spirited" with "combative"?
    – Jaydles
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:19
  • 1
    @Bill quit complaining and get to work! Gotta clean up those flags. :P
    – jjnguy
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:23
  • 2
    @Bill Sorry; I tend to flag a lot now as the closing process doesn't seem to be working. Items that needed to be closed quickly used to be closed quickly, and now they aren't.
    – George Stocker
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:27
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    Here I was hoping to get ChrisF AND Gnoupi as moderators...
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:27
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    @Justin: If you would stop flagging every single Jon Skeet answer with "Please merge this account into my main account..." I'd have time to get some work done. ;)
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:28
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    @George: You're fine. I don't mean to encourage people to flag less. We're just going to have to assign @Will to handling merge requests. :)
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:33
  • 3
    @Bill I'm sorry to have caused you so much trouble. Please after merging, do another merge with my main main account, this one. A bit of spring cleaning never hurts, and I'm getting tired of running three accounts anyway!
    – Pekka
    Jul 9, 2010 at 17:15
  • @jay Notice I said good combative argument. Not like the kind of argument that goes on between Sean Connery and Alex Trebeck; something as spirited, but less personally destructive.
    – user1228
    Jul 10, 2010 at 4:16
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    @Bill Skeet is obviously a bot designed by Google to suck all the rep from SO. But I'm afraid his power level is way too high for any mere mortal to touch him and not be sucked into his event horizon.
    – user1228
    Jul 10, 2010 at 4:19
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    @Will, agh, I just read that as "@Bill Skeet: [some comment]"
    – Pops
    Jul 12, 2010 at 18:02

7 Answers 7

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I've got no objection to Will as an SO moderator, primarily because I know nothing about him. Like many SO mods he seems to be on the C#/Java axis, with which I have almost no interaction. This is of course my loss, but I suspect that Will & co have little knowledge of the other sizeable user groups on SO, such as (of course) the C++ group. I wonder if this kind of fragmentation is a good thing for the site in the long run, or if some form of proportional representation would be a good idea?

Please note I do not myself want to be a mod, as I consider myself temperamentally unsuited to the job.

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    lol, that's funny, because I was using you as an example on a call today of "not all high rep users are appropriate as moderators!". But, with great tenderness.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 9, 2010 at 9:44
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    I don't think that mods are expected to judge the technical accuracy of questions or answers; nor are they even, I think, required to know any of the regular (but non-problematic) users or user groups: so I don't see how it matters what their own speciality as a user is?
    – ChrisW
    Jul 9, 2010 at 9:46
  • @chrisw it is a goal to have a nice spread of timezones and varied backgrounds in moderators, for sure. I would say over time we plan to fix this by having just more moderators in general -- I am of the opinion now that more moderators is always better than less, for coverage reasons, for varied background reasons, for effort distribution, etc etc.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 9, 2010 at 9:50
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    @ChrisW, it matters in the following way. Moderators should also have authority. Authority is not earned through appointments. Controversial decisions of a moderator are taken better if he or she not only gained the powers through Jeff's appointment, but is as well a respectable (and visible) member of community. For example, I saw just a couple of posts of current moderators, and I know nothing about them. And the appointment proposed won't change it.
    – P Shved
    Jul 9, 2010 at 9:52
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    I agree with @ChrisW - Mods should be doing what the members of the community can not. The community can decide what answers / questions are good or bad. I don't think you need to be versed in any specific tags to resolve edit disputes, lock questions, delete SPAM, etc. I'm not saying that's all moderators should / can do, just that the community does most of the work in any particular tag.
    – Tim Post
    Jul 9, 2010 at 10:40
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    @pavel are you disputing the results of the 2010 election where Will came in 4th? (remember that Jason Cohen recused himself) I'd also argue that Gnoupi and Chopper3 are extremely visible on SU and SF.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 9, 2010 at 10:42
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    @Jeff, disputing results of election is not what I'm used to doing. I'm just expressing my disappointment that the new SO moderator is yet another guy I've never seen. :-\
    – P Shved
    Jul 9, 2010 at 11:02
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    While I am a C# developer, I don't think I have to be an expert in pointer arithmetic to see that a C++ question has been downvoted several times and the person who asked the question has the handle "LOL I TROLL U". Mods aren't for answering questions, they're for wielding the banhammer against spammers, pointless trolls, etc etc. I wouldn't be the kind of mod that determines a question is not intellectually sound enough to ask for a particular field and therefore closes it, anyhow.
    – user1228
    Jul 9, 2010 at 14:04
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    @Jeff, just to straighten the election record: As I recall, removing Jason Cohen from the calculation left me in third place, slightly ahead of Will. For what it's worth.
    – mmyers
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:30
  • @mmyers Actually, if you download the results of the weird election rigging software Jeff used (blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/…), I'm the last person eliminated... Or, at least you were eliminated in round 12 and I went down in 13. I'm still not sure how that happened, but there ya go.
    – user1228
    Jul 10, 2010 at 4:23
  • @Will: You made me curious, so I re-downloaded it and tried it again. You're right about the original election, but rerunning it with Jason Cohen withdrawn changes the results by just enough to reorder us. (Originally you were one point ahead in round 12, and with the rerun vote I ended up three points ahead in round 11. This from a total of some 3400 votes.) Anyhow.
    – mmyers
    Jul 10, 2010 at 4:42
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I think I want to vouch for Gnoupi. Although I'm not very active on SU, whenever I do pop in there I see his activity and it's always top notch and looking out for the community. He is also very active and helpful on Meta, where not only is he serving the well-being of the whole network, but also continues to support his home base.

That, and he took on a gang of thugs!

He is responsible, knowledgeable, helpful, and probably most important he is respectful to other users. I think he's a great candidate for this job.

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    yes Gnoupi's awesomeness has definitely been noted :)
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 9, 2010 at 11:09
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    I guess I'll just take that as my own "why should I be a moderator" post, seems quite nice (and slightly exaggerated on the "top-notch" and "knowledgeable" parts, so it's probably better than I would write it myself!
    – Gnoupi
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:11
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    I'll just add in the "Cons" list the tendency from time to time to be a bit harsh. But we have Random already as a moderator, so it shouldn't be noticeable.
    – Gnoupi
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:12
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    Harsh? Those spammers just don't have any sense of humor!
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:21
  • I've also seen him doing good work around Area51 and the SE2.0 sites, so I'm all for it.
    – C. Ross
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:55
7

Agreed, Chopper3 has been a solid chunk o good from the start.

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6

Since we are on this topic, and obviously Will's nomination is creating a bit of a discussion...

Why only one new moderator for Stack Overflow?

The site lives currently with 4 moderators (ok, and a lot of 10k users). I don't know what is the volume of flags generated each day, but I'm pretty sure it reaches some high levels, especially when reading this comment from Bill the Lizard:

I'm glad you're expediting this by bypassing the nomination/election process this time around. The elections are fun, but we've been buried in mod flags on SO lately. A little more help will be much appreciated.

In this case, why not adding one more? According to the discussion about Will, mmyers was pretty close to (or ahead of, I'm not sure) Will, in the previous elections. From his interventions on Meta (I don't know about SO), he seems also like someone who could be of good value in the moderating team.

For reference, his nomination post from the latest elections:

I have been an active contributor to Stack Overflow in the past; anyone who's followed the java tag (or is active on Meta) probably recognizes my name. Recently I've had less time to answer, so I end up hanging out in either the newest questions page or the moderation tools.

Why would I be a good moderator?

  • I like to keep things in line. That's also why I like being a programmer, coincidentally.

  • I always try to be tactful. More than once I've made a comment and then realized it could be taken two ways, so I deleted it. I try never to engage in snarky commenting, funny as it may seem to other people.

    As an example, I earned a Reversal badge for this answer to a do-my-homework question.

  • If I have a difference of opinion with other people, my first instinct is to assume I'm wrong. Only when I'm sure of myself do I take action. For this reason, I rarely cast the first close or delete vote on a question. If the ideal moderator does as little as possible, I'm the perfect one for the job.

  • I'm also a moderator on a game forum, so I have some experience dealing with spam and unruly users. Since I am also one of the game's creators, I also know not to say too much from a position of "power".

Why would I be a bad moderator?

Frankly, I don't know. And maybe that is itself the biggest argument against me.

Edit: I also have a tendency to make corny jokes in comments. I promise will try to keep them to Meta, though.

Of course, this is only a little discussion. I don't know if Jeff, or mmyers himself, would agree with something like that.

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  • For the record, let me quote some of the comments from the nomination thread: I can only recall one interaction with mmyers, but I would hope a moderator would be more impartial towards users than I saw him be. – Tom Ritter♦
    – mmyers
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:22
  • @mmyers I removed a thread of offtopic/baiting/aggressive/something back-and-forth comments between you and a user. (Honestly, I can't recall the exact content, I forgot it after I removed it, so I just recall the broad content.) Jeff would surely be able to look it up if he is concerned and he probably won't mind, but I felt obligated to do service to my opinions. And of course, that's only one interaction one person has had with you, and I only brought it up because you're the break-away star here. – Tom Ritter♦
    – mmyers
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:22
  • @Tom: Oh, yes, I think I remember that. The other user had made what I felt were edits that reduced the quality of the post, so I rolled back most of the changes; then he rolled back to his version again. I don't remember exactly what was going on in the comments during this. – mmyers
    – mmyers
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:23
  • The question that we were discussing can be found here. I bring this up only because someone upvoted Tom Ritter's comment and I believe it is misleading.
    – mmyers
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:49
  • agree, adding @mmyers to list -- I emailed him as well.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:57
  • Lol its almost like we aren't being nominated to be janitors.
    – user1228
    Jul 10, 2010 at 4:26
  • +1 for @mmeyers for going out of his way to provide someone else's criticism of him. Seems highly moderatorial.
    – Jaydles
    Jul 10, 2010 at 20:34
  • Congrats @Gnoupi
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Jul 12, 2010 at 19:28
3

Will's original nomination post, from the latest elections, for reference:

I'll volunteer as well.

Qualifications:

  • While I'm a bit of a jerk, I'm not as bad as RichB.
  • I already do perform the moderation duties I'm allowed, e.g. cleaning up questions
  • I'm a mod at dotnetkicks, so I already know the cross which I'm volunteering to bear
  • Beta tester, got my sticker for free (was on 2nd page)
  • I'm not super-anal; I'm not interested in throwing my mod-weight around

Reasons to avoid like the plague

  • I'm not super-anal; I wouldn't ban RichB
  • I don't spend every minute here like some people
  • I'm not that into ponies
  • While I do participate on meta, it isn't all that often (twice a week)
  • I'm a bit of a jerk sometimes
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    One more reason to support Gnoupi for mod.
    – Pops
    Jul 9, 2010 at 15:18
  • Why? Also, isn't Gnoupi up for an entirely different trilogy site? What does the one thing have to do with the other?
    – Pekka
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:53
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    Thanks, looked forever for that, just got a bunch of dead links...
    – user1228
    Jul 10, 2010 at 4:27
  • @Will - of course, you could have looked for your highest voted answers, to find it in 5th position, also :]
    – Gnoupi
    Jul 10, 2010 at 6:36
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Well if it's possible to get mmyers as a second new mod for SO, I would like to take the liberty and nominate ChrisF as well

One of the main tasks as a moderator is to act on the moderator flags and since quite a lot of them are from both Gnoupi AND ChrisF, I feel like they would be a great asset together.

I mean have a look at this Google Search and you get the picture!

closed off-topic ChrisF site:superuser.com

Plus as someone with more rep than me, he has surely been a great contributor!

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    I win! Joke aside, these searches don't really show the picture, as it's mostly showing the ones where we got there first. If second or more to close, not sure it's taken the same way.
    – Gnoupi
    Jul 10, 2010 at 20:36
  • Well it's just a small query to show that he does take moderating tasks seriously (as you do too)
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 10, 2010 at 20:48
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    I definitely think ChrisF is deserving, if he's willing to do it.
    – mmyers
    Jul 11, 2010 at 4:19
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    yes, I know, it was explanation of my joke only. ChrisF is of great value on these sites. And probably more cold headed than I am sometimes.
    – Gnoupi
    Jul 11, 2010 at 11:12
0

What about StackApps?

There are no community mods there.

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  • Is it really a problem?
    – perbert
    Jul 9, 2010 at 21:31
  • No, but for completeness, I think we should have some.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Jul 9, 2010 at 22:30
  • Edition: If you flip through the user list, you'll see that there a lot of Moderators there. Just not as elected positions, yet. I personally have not seen the need.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Jul 10, 2010 at 5:32
  • @Robert: I know that there are mods there, just none elected by the community. There's not much of a need, but who knows - that may change.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Jul 10, 2010 at 5:40
  • That's now changed, I believe.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Dec 27, 2010 at 0:30

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