2011 Moderator Election

Hey, guys, I go by Raven Dreamer on this site - you may have seen me around.

I think Gaming is an awesome resource, and I want to play a larger role in shaping it to be even more awesome!

Though I was first introduced to stackexchange via StackOverflow, Gaming is my #1 site both in terms of rep and "Time Spent Browsing". Since I've been active since the private beta, I've had more time than most to dedicate towards improving the site, and as one of the two 20k+ rep users currently on the site, I think that investment speaks for itself.

In terms of qualifications, in many ways I feel like a moderator already - whether that's approving pending edits, diving into months old questions in an attempt to achieve better tagging, or even just joining forces with Grace Note and Mana to better educate new users to the site.

In terms of policy, I don't like to give downvotes (I'm currently at about 1650 total votes, only six of which were downvotes), preferring to improve, via edit, the question or answer instead. In my mind it's better to point folks in the right direction than to blindly send downvotes their way without helping them understand what went wrong in the first place.

I like to think I'm reasonably active on the site's meta already, though some of my ideas go over better than others. I think one of the most important quality for a moderator to have is the stones to take responsibility for their ideas and actions. Better to air an idea and have it fall flat than to propose nothing at all.

Finally, there are few things I like more than talking, so if you ever have a question for me, about a specific game, my candidacy, or about something else entirely, feel free to ping me the next time you're in chat.

Thanks for your time, and good luck to my fellow candidates - something tells me that whichever way Gaming decides, we'll wind up with a decent pair of moderators no matter what!

(Like many others, I’m updating my nomination from last election.)

My name is Kevin, and I’m a high school student in Vancouver, BC. Although I often have schoolwork to complete, I'm also a very active member of Gaming.SE (as shown by my rep).

I think the Stack Exchange is one of, if not the, best network of websites on the Internet. I spend a lot of my time on Gaming, asking and answering questions, because it’s so great. We have one of the nicest communities on the web here, and our database of knowledge is growing steadily each and every day. I’d love to play a greater role in the development of Gaming, and this is why I’m nominating to become a community moderator. ♦

As well as asking questions and answering them, I spend a lot of my time on Gaming editing other posts, to improve them. My theory is that one of a moderator's duties should contribute to the site positively by improving the content already existent. By keeping the quality of Gaming’s content as high as possible, more users who come across our site are likely to participate. One of the other things I do on Gaming is frequent /review, assisting our newer users with their first steps on Gaming.

As a recent 10k user, I have spent a lot of time flagging posts, reviewing flags, and looking over suggested edits. According to Jeff’s Theory of Moderation, reviewing flagged posts in one of the most important aspects of being a moderator, which I am already doing now.

However, I ensure that all my actions are beneficial towards the site. When, for example, casting a close vote on a new user’s off-topic question, I offer them insight as to why their question is off-topic, and link them to the FAQ so they will know the specifics of Gaming, and how they can make their next question better. As moderators have binding votes when it comes to closing questions and other actions, I would first see if the community agrees before taking definitive action.

As a moderator, I would take more of a behind-the-scenes role. I would focus my efforts on making sure Gaming is in tip-top shape by making edits to posts, disposing of spam, reviewing flagged posts, and more. When a large discussion such as our previous game-rec situation arises, I would start a post on Meta to collect the community’s opinion, rather than immediately act on it. I believe that the site should still be community run, with moderators only occasionally needing to intervene with special cases, such as settling out-of-control arguments, or taking action concerning troublesome posts or users.

Feel free to ask additional questions in the comments, and best of luck to all the other nominees!

My name is Brent Warner, and I'd like you to consider me for moderator. I've been an active member since the beta, and have participated in a number of chat and meta discussions to help shape the site's policy, as well as enforcing that policy through flagging and editing. I've also actively worked to help grow the site by helping with the various promotions and writing for the blog.

My goals as a moderator would be to expand visibility for the site, find ways to encourage new users to become regulars and regular users to become community advocates, and make sure that we are playing to the strong suits of the Stack Exchange engine. While I haven't always agreed with the decisions made by the community, I have always followed them to the best of my ability, and as a moderator I would continue to act in this way: voice my opinion throughout debate, but support and enforce decisions once they are made. I would also push for more decisiveness in our decision making, since I feel that it is better to make a decision (and change it if necessary) than to avoid making a decision at all.

My name is Ivo Flipse and I'm hereby resubmitting my previous nomination.

While most of you know me as being a moderator on Super User and Fitness & Nutrition, I'm also the one who proposed Web Apps and sadly wasn't allowed to propose this Gaming though I did propose literally dozens of example questions for it on Area51. I came in 4th in the previous elections, while past performances are no guarantee for the future, I think I've shown to be a good moderator on other sites.

Why did I bore you with these facts? Well, I still haven't gathered sufficient rep on Gaming to be able to vote to close. So, while I might not look active on Gaming, I can assure you that I spend a considerable amount of time on this site. I did get the Electorate and Fanatic badge which indicates I visit the site nearly every day and vote on a lot of questions.

Furthermore, I received a community grant on Super User to help promote the site. I mainly focused it on setting up a blog and sponsoring hardware and software to test and review them for the community. I think the blog should be a complimentary part of Stack Exchange site, to highlight their best content, inform users about recent changes and give the users a platform for things that don't fit the Q&A format (podcasts, reviews etc). This is also why I helped revive the Gaming blog, which I think has done quite well so far. By becoming a mod on Gaming, I hope to extend what I've done with the community grant so far and help boost the content on Gaming as well.

As for moderating, I've used my experience from moderating Super User to help guide new pro-temp moderators from all the new SE-sites in our moderator chat room (including Grace Note & badp). This is also where my zealous resentment against game-rec and identify-this-game come from. I've seen these questions pop up on every SE-site, only to see them cause problems later on. I pride myself in helping Diago "tighten the rules on Super User so that it has one of the clearest goals in the network" (thank you ChrisF). Which is what I hope to achieve on Gaming as well.

For those having doubts about me (and others) being able to moderate multiple sites: I've already scaled down my activities on Super User in favor of managing the blog instead. (Besides the mods that were elected there have my back) As for Fitness & Nutrition, it is a very small site with less than 5 questions/day, so it doesn't require the same level of attention Super User or Gaming would. I don't think I'd need to participate a lot more in Gaming in order to moderate it effectively. Given that I'm self-employed, I have a lot of flexibility in how I spend my time and most of my spare time is spend on Stack Exchange anyway.

As to address Matthews comment: there's only so much one man can do to help clean up once you hit the volumes of Super User. I have made suggestions for seeding the site with questions we do want on our site and cleaning up old low quality questions, or how to deal with duplicates, converting questions to CW and several of the problems that plagued the Trilogy in the beginning. However, I think Super User is unique in both the width of its scope and its low proportion of active user. Gaming suffers from a different problem: the lack of diversity in the titles that are being covered and the strong correlation between release dates and question volume. I think Grace Note made a good start with the Portal 2 and Witcher 2 launches, but I think it would be better to sponsor more (diverse) titles and make sure a critical mass of users would be asking and answering questions. Hopefully as a mod I'll be able to take more pro-active action towards making this happen.

So with me, Gaming will gain a moderator who has a lot of experience with moderating on the network and who cares about the site's functioning and the topic itself. I won't passively watch the community moderate itself, because I feel that I know what the community wants. I'm strict in applying the rules, but open for discussion and fair in my judgement.

I'm sjohnston, Gaming.SE's resident unicorn. I'm a lifelong gamer, on platforms as diverse as PC, Mac, console, handheld and smartphone. I've enjoyed my time as a member of the site, and I'd like to further contribute by becoming a moderator.

I'm active in all aspects of Gaming.SE. You can see from my history that I've asked and answered plenty of questions here. I'm not afraid to put forth significant effort (1,2,3). I show up daily in chat. I am a frequent editor and frequent voter. I've written for the blog. I'm not the most prolific poster on meta, but I do participate, and I watch the feed even if I don't always answer.

Gaming.SE is already a great site. We have a friendly, helpful and knowledgeable community. We have high standards of quality that are maintained without being hostile to newcomers. We have a lot of fun. As a moderator, I will try to support all of our best qualities, but I won't be afraid to intervene in a situation that threatens to degrade our site. I will strive to be fair, and I will always favor incentives for improvement over imposition of punishment.

Sometimes, moderators need to make difficult decisions for the good of the community. As a moderator, I would encourage making these decisions decisively, while still seeking input from as many users as possible. One of the reasons the great "game-rec" debate was so unpleasant was because we avoided making a decision until we had no other choice. When the debate was raging, I offered a potential solution - the solution we ended up using.

On the other hand, good moderators also need to learn from their mistakes. The decision-making strategy I envisioned turned out to be too loosely defined. The ensuing problems in the voting process caused even more hostility and hurt feelings. I regret that, and I would make sure we had good solutions to those problems before employing that sort of system again.

In closing, I will say that I do not have experience moderating a site (StackExchange or otherwise). However, I'm very active around here, and I'm able to think on my feet. I have a fairly calm temperament, and I always try to look at multiple sides of a given issue. Most importantly, I am dedicated to Gaming.SE, and I want to see our community continue to grow and thrive. I hope you'll consider voting for me.

Gaming is one of those sites where I expected to have much higher reputation than I actually do. I'm an avid gamer, but I am perpetually a couple years behind, which makes answering questions difficult. This is at least in part due to Stack Exchange eating into my spare time. :) Still, I'm getting there slowly but surely.

I am an elected moderator on Programmers, so I am very familiar with how Stack Exchange works. I prefer to educate as much as possible over simply mod-hammering away, so most actions I take come with an explanatory comment. I also tend to err on the side of welcoming new users to the community and teaching them what SE is all about.

My moderation style can be best described as "firm but hopefully fair". I do not hesitate to edit questions when needed or to close them when editing cannot help. I also do not have a problem with taking a back seat and letting the community handle the more common cases. From what I see on Gaming, the community takes care of itself and I definitely do not want to upset that balance. I do not take any action as a moderator that I cannot back up with references to existing guidelines. If questioned on any decision, I always explain the reasoning that went into it and reverse it if I turn out to be wrong.

Far as getting involved with the site goes, I have not been very active on Meta Gaming in terms of posting questions or answers, but I have been reading along and learning what this community is all about. Similarly, I always lurk in the questions on the main site. I recently got the Deputy badge for flagging posts and although I do not yet have the reputation needed to vote to close, I do what I can.

A vote for me is a vote for... well, someone most of you have probably never heard of. :P

But, I take community moderation as a serious responsibility. If elected, I will do my best to give back to and represent this community that I've been a silent part of for the last several months. Thank you all for your consideration and may the best 2 mods win. :)

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Juan Manuel asked if I would have the time to commit to moderating two sites. That's a very fair question and I really should've addressed it in the first place.

I thought about that before deciding to nominate myself and I believe I can handle both sites. Programmers does not require a lot of modding time. It really wouldn't be hard to carve out some time out of reading other SE sites and divert it into moderating Gaming, especially since a chunk of my normal SE time is spent on Gaming anyway. For what it's worth, I'm almost always online and I refresh SE sites the way some refresh Facebook - compulsively. :)

Hi everyone! I'm Mana and I want to become a moderator here at Gaming.SE.

Though I missed the private beta boat, I became an active member on this site following the public launch, especially when the chat was released. Hanging out on the chat frequently has made me feel quite attached to the community, and in turn made me want to help this site succeed. To that end, I have been actively checking the site daily and pitching in with questions, answers, and edits to help improve the quality of the content hosted here.

I am a very active flagger. I was the first user to obtain the Deputy badge (even before the Community bot) and I currently have one of the highest flag weights on the site. However, I'm avidly against simply wiping a user's content from the site without giving my reasons; with each flag I drop, I also leave a comment explaining my concerns, redirecting them to the proper section of the site if appropriate.

I take a similar stance with casting close votes. These days, if I vote to close a question, I make sure that I know my reasons why and I explain them to the user if no one else has. I know what it's like to find the site and put time into writing a question you're interested in hearing the answer to...only to find out that it's just not going to work here. I'll try to reduce the pain as much as I can for these unfortunate users. It also sucks to have your content removed or shut down for unclear reasons, and it's even worse to have that happen for seemingly no reason at all. I promise I won't do that to you, mod or not.

This caution and explanation is especially important if I become a moderator; if I'm the one responding to the flag instead of simply raising it, and if my close vote holds so much more additional weight, then extra responsibility is placed on me to make sure that my actions accurately reflect the community's opinion, not my own, possibly mistaken, views. When I'm unsure as to what should be done, I'll ask on chat or meta to get a better idea of what makes the most sense.

When it comes to making decisions on the site, I tend to be a bit more laid-back than most. I like to see how the community feels about a problem and go with the flow. I acknowledge that this sort of approach can't work all the time, though, such as with the nightmare that was dealing with game-rec, so I'll keep my eye out for any similar situations that might develop and try to reach a consensus with the other mods if elected, to make the process as painless as possible.

I'm also a very social person. I spend a lot of time chilling with other members of the site on the chat, being totally cool (lies) and cracking hilarious jokes (blatant lies). The strong ties to the community I've made through the chat would just make me feel even worse if I managed to screw up things for everybody here somehow as a mod...so if I get elected, I'll try my best to make sure that doesn't happen. :)

Good luck (have fun) to all the other candidates!

Like Arda, I'm updating my old nomination. :)

I'm FallenAngelEyes and I'd like to nominate myself as a moderator candidate for the site. I've been a member of the Gaming.SE site since committing to the Area 51 proposal. I'm an American living in the Netherlands, which means I'm also available during non-peak US hours to catch stuff like flagged comments.

I was active during the private and public betas and have done my best to remain active on the main site and meta. I also participated as editor for Gaming.SE's Wordpress blog. I have tried to remain active in discussions about site policy and community standards, including game-rec and identify-this-game. In addition, I'm heading to GamesCom in Cologne in order to do coverage for Gaming's blog, as well as give out swag and try to bring Gaming's visibility to a wider audience.

I am an avid gamer who enjoys a large range of genres, from FPS to TBS to RPG to rhythm games. I currently balance my time fairly evenly between console and PC gaming, with a smattering of portable gaming in between, though I lack a smartphone so I have no real experience in iPhone/Android gaming. I enjoy delving into the indie game scene as well. I care about gaming a great deal as a part of my life, and I take a lot of pleasure in sharing my experiences and expertise with others in order to help inspire their own passion for gaming.

I believe that it's important to maintain a high standard of quality in the site and its content while still having a community that is enjoyable to be a part of. While knowledge of gaming is important to be a part of this site, I think the most important aspect of a moderator is how well they use their privileges to represent the community and maintain its standards while balancing that with the occasional necessity to make a binding decision. I am committed to helping improve and maintain the site's quality, visibility, and community.

If you have any questions/comments or feel that I am not suited for the position, please let me know via comments and/or chat so I know what areas I can improve in. I'm nearly always available/pingable in the general chat room for the site. I wish the best of luck to all the other nominees!