My name is Machavity and I'd like to be elected moderator.

I've been active in the moderation scene already

• Room owner of SOCVR
• Room owner of Trogdor (Burnination organization and discussion)
• Over 15000 (7000+ visible) reviews
• Over 3000 helpful flags
• Over 37,000 close votes cast (I frequently use all my close votes)
• Feedback contributor in Charcoal and SOBotics

SOCVR really has been an eye opener with moderator interaction and I've even had a few (like Bhargav Rao) encourage me to run. I enjoy helping the community by doing moderation and hope to improve upon that by becoming a moderator.

My moderator questionnaire answers

Hi! I'm Jason, known around these parts as Makoto. I'm a self-acknowledged Meta-hound and I consider myself to be an advocate for the ultimate objective of this site.

I would like to throw my hat into the ring of consideration for moderator. If the community will have me, I would be honored to take on the responsibility.

To me, a moderator should be capable of:

• Handling flags
• Dealing with tricky situations which arise on the main site, or Meta
• Being an ambassador of the site and its goals
• Keeping your cool when the rest of the site is spontaneously combusting

…and I feel that I can absolutely rise to those challenges.

While I believe that my reputation precedes me, I feel that my actions speak louder than the words I'd type here. Feel encouraged to peruse or question any of my moderator-like activity on the site, and I'll rise to address any concerns you have.

Hi, my name is coldspeed. I am a 24 y/o grad student at USC, and an incoming full timer at Google. I'd like to nominate myself for the position of moderator.

I would make a good moderator because

• I care very much about the quality of content because I understand its importance. (over 4K edits, 12K up/downvotes, and 6K close votes)
• I am a diligent flagger (over 2K helpful flags) and take plagiarism very seriously.
• I am very responsive to feedback and criticism.
• I visit Stack Overflow every day (visited 833 days, 234 consecutive)

I would not make a good moderator because

• I have taken actions in the past that the community did not agree with.
• I am younger than most of the other nominees, and admittedly not as experienced dealing with people and situations.

I've only been an active member for the last two years, and I understand I still have a long way to go before I can earn your vote of confidence. However, I do very much care for this site as it has done so much for my career thus far, and I hope to be able to give back just as much (if not more) as Stack Overflow has given to me.

Questionnaire

Hello, my name is Travis, and I am running for moderator.

I would make a good moderator because I

• am good with people
• have real world experience with mediation
• have a strong grasp of Stack Overflow's history and goals
• want to help Stack Overflow remain successful

If I were a moderator I would be very accessible through Meta or chat, and be as transparent as possible. Cohesion is very important to me.

I am also readily available at most hours of the day, including hours which most users are away.

My answers to the questionnaire

I'm Zoe, and I'd like to be a future moderator here on SO.

I've been actively moderating for about a year (mainly related to bots, along with watching a couple tags, and participating in SOCVR and some other rooms), and a couple years with review queues and on-site moderation (mainly on the Android tag).

Why not me?

• I only have 12k rep, so I haven't gotten access to, and gotten familiar with, the rest of the publicly available moderation tools
• I'm not very active on meta - I do notice some of the featured posts, and I do participate, but I might not be as active as is expected.
• I've only been around for about 3 years

Why me?

• I'm efficient when it comes to moderating, and I'm usually able to tell whether a post is good or not in a couple seconds. And also accurate, with 99.23% approved flags network-wide (of 14k, 12k of which are on SO with ~100 SD autoflags)
• I participate in a couple moderation-related chat rooms, so I have experience with different aspects of moderation
• I enjoy reviewing stuff, keeping the site clean
• I always try to follow pre-defined rules and guidelines

My answers are here

Hello, I'm Makyen.

I've been hooked on SO ever since answering a question 4 years ago.

Why me?

• I've been active in user-level moderation for years, with 3.1k+ helpful flags on SO (99.6% helpful), 31k+ close-votes, and 5.8k+ reviews.
• I fight spam and rude/abusive (/R/A) content, having reviewed 20k+ posts and cast 10k+ flags across SE (99.7% helpful).
• I've been active in chat moderation as a Room Owner for SOCVR (user-level moderation) and Charcoal HQ (fight spam & R/A).
• I believe off-topic questions should be closed quickly, but users should be given the chance and encouragement to edit their questions to be on-topic, but questions which are inherently off-topic can be deleted or left for the Roomba script.
• I routinely question closure and deletion requests in SOCVR, when I feel it's for inappropriate reasons, or the question is on-topic.
• I believe inappropriate content spam & R/A, or content that's causing harm, should be deleted quickly.
• I'm here most of the time.

Questionnaire

My name is Sterling Archer, of the site for almost 8 years. I would like to be your moderator. I have an old system belief in SO that I would like to see again, where the quality of the site content is the most important issue.

I have always been a logical thinker when it comes to issues -- I am not perfect, but I always try to approach a situation with a level head. In the cases I cannot, deference is a good solution.

My reviews are up there but inconsistent, as most of my community work is done via chats or "on the question" activity (comments, edits, votes etc). It's not an issue to pick up the queue numbers and maintain.

Why me? While new members are very important to the site, I believe that there needs to be more effort to engage the old, established users. I use the 10k tools, I do my research, and I often comment to help failing questions to try and salvage effort. My flag success is just north of 96%.

Why not me? I may be a bit stubborn and defensive, but I will never lose my mind on somebody. Always a learning curve for anybody.

My Questionnaire

Hello I'm Jean-François Fabre, 47 y/o from France.

Since I joined in 2016, I'm doing my best to moderate the site given my 40k+ reputation (so max of 30 delete votes) and gold badges.

I've voted 10000+ times to close and 14000+ times to delete for a total of 37000+ votes.

I'm also 15th all-time reviewer in NAA queue, contributor at SOCVR (not only for the jokes), and avid reader / occasional answerer on meta (70+ answers).

How I'd see my moderator duties:

• Fight spam & non-answers
• block unclear/off-topic questions & useless duplicates
• Counter rude & abusive comments, enforce mutual respect
• Keep the site useable by minimizing noise
• Fight voting fraud
• Justify my actions when needed on meta

That, without losing touch of the reality of the main site: keep on asking & answering questions on my favourite Python & C tags

I answer your questions

Hi, I'm Baum and I would like to be your moderator.

I have been actively participating in curating the content of the site ever since I first accessed the review queues. My maturity and knowledge on the site has increased with my time here on site, as has the time I spend on moderating the site.

My goal is to continue the work that's been done by the current moderators, which is to build a library of high quality posts.

Why me?

• I spend my time curating the new questions, by either editing and commenting, by finding suitable duplicates or by voting to close.
• I use the 10k tools to find NAAs and incorrect new tags.
• I have a flexible schedule and I'll be present whenever duty calls.
• I have a calm mind and handle heated situations very well. When I receive feedback that I have made a mistake, I not only admit my mistake, but also make sure that I fix that before I get back to the task.
• I have nearly 11k helpful flags (18 decl), 13k close votes and 5k delete votes. I'm also interested in chat moderation (I'm a RO of SOBotics).

Why not me?

• I don't post frequently on meta, but I am planning to improve.

Thank you and may the best candidates win.

Stack Overflow exists so that we code-writers can easily find solutions to problems. Everything else is secondary. Moderation is not an end in itself.

We have moderation to keep solution-finding easy. Sometimes the best path to take is not clear, so we discuss on Meta. We can get a little caught up in that, but Meta also is not an end in itself.

Our mod team does a good job helping us to keep it easy. I'd like to join them in that effort.

What I can offer you as a moderator is a clear eye fixed on our goal, working hard to ensure the spirit of our guidelines manifests on the site.

Like Cody Gray before me, I admit I've felt discouraged, like I'm bailing out the Titanic with a thimble. I don't use the queues much: I don't see results in my tags, and it feels like wasted time.

But I do vote and edit a lot. I work hard so that answer-seekers in my little corner of tech (including myself!) have an easy time finding what they need. That's what we're all here for, ultimately.

As a moderator, I won't stop helping the useful stuff out-compete the not-useful stuff. I'll just be able to do it faster and more broadly.