About

What are moderator elections?

Moderator elections are held periodically to determine who the community moderators will be for a given site.

What are community moderators?

Moderators are site users who have been elected by the community based on not only their knowledge in the topic domain. On Meta Stack Exchange moderators are appointed by staff. Moderators are chosen because they are:

• patient and fair
• lead by example
• show respect for their fellow community member in their actions and words

Moderators have the very highest level of privilege in our system:

• Moderator votes are binding. Any place they vote (close, open, delete, undelete, offensive, etc), that vote will reach the threshold and take effect immediately.
• Moderators can lock posts. Locked posts cannot be voted on or changed in any way.
• Moderators can protect posts. Protected posts cannot be answered by new users (users who earned less then 10 reputation on that site, association bonus is excluded).
• Moderators can see all data in the system, including voting trends and user profile information.
• Moderators can place users in timed suspension, and delete users if necessary.
• Moderators can perform large-scale maintenance actions like merging questions and batch retag them.
• Moderators have access to the moderator flag queue.

How do community moderators work?

The following guidelines are provided to all our community moderators, and all moderators of any type are expected to abide by them:

1. As a moderator, your actions now represent our community; please act accordingly. You are in a position of the highest trust.
2. Your goal is to guide the community with gentle — but firm — intervention. Respect your fellow community members at all times; demonstrate fairness and impartiality in your actions.
3. Keep the discussion reasonably on topic by providing visible feedback to indicate where and why things have gone off topic.
4. Regularly check for and deal with posts flagged for moderator attention.
5. In the case of serious disputes, communicate directly with users via email to help mediate and resolve disputes.

When should I seek out a community moderator?

Don't hesitate to flag posts for moderator attention any time there is something you feel strongly needs to be brought to the attention of a moderator. And if it is extremely urgent, you can always click the "Contact" link at the bottom.

See also:

• There's an election going on. What's happening and how does it work?
• When do moderator elections take place?
• What are the details on the “candidate score” which shows during an election?
• How are moderator election votes counted, in plain English?