2014 Moderator Election

Nathan's answers to your questions

As a fairly active on ServerFault and with a couple years of activity under my belt to get to know the community, I'd like to elect myself for moderator. I don't have the highest review/meta activity as other candidates, but I believe I can be very helpful in terms of controlling the seemingly endless flow of new users and assisting users who really do have knowledge to share with asking good questions and improving the site as a whole.

I'm also active in the SE chat and am well-known on ServerFault despite my relative "newness".

My timezone is GMT-5 and I am active throughout the day most of the time. Questions? Comments are open, of course!

mdpc's answers to your questions

Hello, I've been an active member of ServerFault since it was Beta. I have contributed directly in asking and answering many questions where I can and am in the top 2% reputation wise. I'm interested in helping out and giving back where I can to the ServerFault community.

I have been actively involved in the reviewing of questions and answers and and I rank highly among the top reviewers in all review categories.

I have tried to keep this forum focused on being a site for professional systems administrators and their problems. In fact, being a system administrator is my passion as well as my work.

I appreciate your consideration of myself for the position of moderator. Thank you for your time.

Ward's answers to your questions

I'm putting my name in to be a moderator because I'm willing to help keep the site running smoothly and I think my activity on SF shows that I'd do a good job.

• I've been the most active voter on SF for several years now and the most active voter on all of SE for a couple years. This means I read - at least skim - a lot of the questions and answers.
• I've done the most close and re-open reviews on SF, so I know what questions aren't a good fit here. I do a fair amount of close-voting outside of reviews.
• I'm very active on meta.SF (currently have the highest "participation") and fairly active on meta.SE, so I'm aware of many of the questions and concerns people have about the sites.
• I'm not super-active in Chat, but enough to know who most of the regulars are.
• I'm active on a couple other SE sites and drop in now and then on about 5 more, so I see how other sites operate, what issues they have - my perspective isn't based just on SF.

A minor point in my favour is that I'm in a time zone that is currently understaffed by mods (UTC-8 aka Pacific Time i.e. the west coast of N.America).

Falcon's answers to your questions

I'd like to nominate myself for one of the available moderator posts. I've been around this community since 2012, and I've found it very helpful throughout, and watched it evolve over the past couple years.

As an active reviewer, I've participated actively in the user-moderation of this community, cleaning up questions that need to be put on hold, checking that new users know how to use the site, and other review tasks. However, lately I see the close queue growing and keep hitting the 20-review cap.

This, I think, is emblematic of a long-brewing problem. Swifter action on off-topic questions would help retain the value this community has to professionals. This doesn't mean closing questions that are marginal with the mod hammer, of course, but it does mean rapidly closing the most blatant examples, deleting things that cry out for deletion, protecting spam magnet questions, and most importantly, migrating away questions which belong more on another network site.

I can best help with this as a moderator.

I'm usually active in the GMT-0800 afternoon and night (GMT 2200-1100), a period of time which at present seems a little underserved.

Thank you for your consideration!

TODO: answer questions from the voters

ServerFault is in decline, and has been for some time. The main page is flooded by off-topic questions, by users who are either incapable of, or unwilling to read the simplest of instructions. In short, these are desperate, extreme times, when ServerFault is desperate to be saved from the flood of extreme stupidity overwhelming it.

Extreme, desperate times call for extreme, desperate measures, and I can think of no measure more extreme or desperate than electing me as moderator.

Despite our current moderation team's best of intentions and efforts, they are simply ill-equipped to deal with the current realities, which is why quality on the site has plummeted while the numbers of painfully clueless users has skyrocketed.

What we need for these exceptional times are someone exceptional. Someone with exceptional methods, exception snarkiness and exceptional cruelty. Someone who will strike at the core of the problem, the exceptionally vapid new user horde, with exceptional enthusiasm and vigor.

A vote for me is a vote to put my cruelty and viciousness to work for the site, against the horde of stupidity that threatens it.

Vote n00b today, for a brighter ServerFault tomorrow.

TODO: answer questions from the voters

Joining this site from the last of 2010, my performance in 2011 brought me 15K rep, #11 year rank. However, the reputation descended over the years because I have a small family, but I'm still in top 0.31% overall.

Although that I'm not active in the meta, I often edit the question and the answer to keep the formatting or re-tag. I have patience and always readiness to help other people to solve their problems - a good way to improve my solving skills.

Whenever I find an answer to my own question, the first thing come to my mind is note down by sharing it with everyone via this site.

I'm in GMT+7 and I think I can spend an hour for this site to moderate.

Thanks for your consideration.

HBruijn's answers to your questions!

Where a number of more long standing contributors to this community are very vocal in what they perceive as the decline of ServerFault I would like to be the voice of moderation.

I have gained some reputation here on Server Fault by posting answers.

I have posted even more comments, many on questions I also voted to close. We do see more than a fair share of idiots, but also too many pimply-faced-youths without any experienced supervision that might simply benefit from collective experience. After being handed the correct technical term, or pointing out the duplicate question, many will then manage on their own again.

In Meta and chat I'm more of a lurker and my current role means that all my technical questions are for the home environment and definitely off-topic ;)

Although often when reading the documentation fails, the best answers come from Server Fault and the larger Stack Exchange. That quality is worth striving for to maintain.

From a practical perspective, I'm in UTC+1; Central European Time, which will benefit from additional moderator availability

Sven's answers to your questions

After being a member of Serverfault nearly from the beginning, I'd like to nominate myself for a moderator position for this election round.

While I am not interested at all in ranks, stats and activity counts, I think that with 1500 answers and a top 20 reputation, I demonstrated that I know this site well and care about it a lot. I'd like to further help out in a meaningful way by taking on moderation duty.

I live in Europe and am most active in the UTC 9-19 time frame, with frequent activity beyond that time. I believe that we currently lack moderation capacity in that corner of the world, which was the tipping point to make me run for this election.

Thank you very much for your time.

TODO: answer questions from the voters

Nominating myself!?

• Why not? I could use a little part of my time for free assist.

• Compliant to requirements?

  • patient and fair: Yes, I am. I won't try to prove this, but I am.

  • leads by example: This is my first, my prefered method for teaching.

  • shows respect for their fellow community members in their actions and words: This could be very difficult, but I'm a swiss person with a long fair communication tradition.

  • open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions: As previously said: This is a part of my own personality.

  If I wrote 1 article showing this point of vue... Please have a look at : 𝙍ecursive 𝙏hread, about 𝙁ormation 𝙈ethods

  For the rest, I like some humor, and sometime I could make the wrong proof: Why did my alphabet had 40 letters?

• But I love to be free and I want to stay free.. If for some weeks I won't appear, this have to not be harmful.

Thanks for reading. Have a nice day!

Signal15's answers to your questions

Though I am a recent addition to 'the family", I have moderated in other forums and would like to take a crack at it here. This family of sites has helped me in numerous ways, and I would welcome the chance to return the favor.

My only redeeming quality is that, as a fresh-face, I can lend a different perspective to things.