Is there a time when we elect non-temporary moderators on an SE 2.0 site?

Question

On the Theoretical Computer Science site, we have temporary moderators that Robert assigned, and it's been a fairly pleasant process thus far (I'm one of them). I assume that eventually we'll run an election for permanent moderators on the site. So I have three questions:

1. Is there some time point in the public beta when it's recommended that we do this ?
2. Or should we be waiting till we have a sufficient number of 2000+ rep users (so they have some experience with using some of the moderator tools) ?
3. In any case, will we then email Robert as before to enable moderator access for the selected candidates ?

Answer 1

Update:

The nominations for moderator elections will start about 30 days after a site graduates from beta.

Moderator nominations will not be conducted as a meta thread, as they were done with the original sites. We are in the process of creating a custom software module for holding the Moderator nominations. It was the only way to conduct a fair and impartial nomination process, without the quirks of trying to force it into a meta-voting thread.

We just passed 30 days on our first sites. The development is underway so we will start the first round of nominations as soon as the module is ready.

Answer 2

I'm going to address this as I have understood the system as a user.

1. Real moderators are elected by the community at the end of the public beta, if not around that period of time. To quote Robert from the Pro Tempore Moderator blog post,

   Moderators Pro Tem focus and expedite the essential needs of each new site. By the end of Beta, the community will be better suited to hold their own elections.

2. The tools for diamonds are different than what is available to the "10k" users, as are the tasks associated with the status. So what is more important for a user is simply knowing how the system works, what constitutes appropriate content, and how to communicate effectively with the community. Reputation is indicative of this knowledge, but general activity especially on Meta can also show this. Prioritize having good candidates over having as many options as possible. Likewise from the blog post, you should already have a thread on the Meta site for nominating candidates for the real moderator positions.

3. Judging from what I've read on the actual Stack Overflow elections, the election will be hosted by the team on the site, probably by Robert in this scenario. So when the election is over and the votes are to be tallied, he will most likely already have the results, rendering an email unnecessary.