2011 Moderator Election

First, a quick bio on myself. I live in the Washington DC suburbs, my day job is mostly telecommuting in the IT space, which leaves me easily distracted with sites like SE. Not long after I was old enough to stick a fork in the outlet, I was helping with various projects around the house. And as soon as I got a place of my own, I started volunteering with the local Habitat chapter as a way to learn more.

As for why I'm volunteering to be a mod here, my time at Habitat has been a good example of this role already. Many of the house leaders there are in the "grumpy old men" category, and there's a constant stream of new volunteers that don't know the system. So much of my time is now spent trying to prevent conflicts, find happy mediums that work with the overall goals of the Habitat group, and keep the new people happy enough that they hopefully come back and help out on the site as regular volunteers. They thought I did a good enough job of that at Habitat that they brought me on as a house leader, so should you decide to bring me on as a mod here, hopefully I'll do the same to keep the peace and make it an enjoyable place in the SE community.

That said, if I'm not elected, I'm perfectly happy with that as well. It's nice to have fewer commitments in life, and with only 2 months of time here, I personally feel there are a lot of others that I'd like to see nominate themselves. With so little time spent here, I know there are still a lot of things about SE that I have yet to learn. The main reason for putting my name in the ring is because of all the good work that our existing mods and others have already done in getting this site up. If any of them need a break from the laborious day to day chores, I'm happy to lend a hand as a sign of gratitude and to keep the site running smoothly.

I would like to nominate myself for the position of one of the moderators of this site.

I am both an experienced DIYer - having redecorated and renovated four houses of increasing size and disrepair of the last 25+ years - and member of the Stack Exchange community. I know how Stack Exchange works and I hope that I know how to apply that knowledge to this site.

I don't think that this site needs the level or kind of intervention that other sites on the network sometimes require. I think this is due to a number of factors, our relatively low traffic - though this is growing, the nature of the problems we see and the nature of the people.

However, a relatively low traffic site has it's own problems. Questions that should be closed or migrated tend to stay open longer as less people see them and can vote on them. This is where the moderators have to step in. You need to be both pro-active, looking at the recent questions to see what's been posted and the recent votes pages to see what is being voted on. You also need to be able to react to the flags that are raised by users with lower reputation.

I am a moderator on Programmers and Web Applications as well, but I believe that I can perform the duties that would be required for this site without neglecting any of the sites.

Having said all that, if the existing pro-temp moderators decide to stand I will withdraw in their favour.

I would like to nominate myself for the position of Home Improvement Moderator. Currently I am one of the three Pro Tempore Moderators originally selected to bring the site from Beta to Production. I have enjoyed moderating the Home Improvement Stack Exchange site and would like to continue in the future. Currently I have handled most of the moderator duties on the site; 60% of all moderator interventions all time (keep in mind this is only 72 out of 120 total issues; Home Improvement has few moderator issues).

In the past I have tried to stay away from making moderator decisions (such as closing or migrating posts) until other members of the community have voted on the question as described in A Theory of Moderation). But there is sometimes a need to be that initial or final "vote" for a question just because of the low traffic of the site (it is sometimes necessary to jump in to help push the votes to the end).

As far as my qualifications go, I am experienced at Home Improvement having worked with my father on various electrical, plumbing, and general home improvement tasks. And now, after having owned 3 homes in the past 8 years (a total of 10 different homes/apartments in the past 14 years), my home improvement experience grown while also having seen a lot of good home improvement jobs (and also a lot of not so good ones too!). I enjoy fixing up my own house and not having to call the professional, but of course I know there are times when it is best to call in a professional and not try tackling everything yourself.

My participation on the meta site has been particularly poor. My day job (or really jobs) keep me too busy to really put the hard thinking into the responses usually needed for the questions that come up on the meta site. But I do have a vision that I accumulate enough moderator and meta confidence and knowledge in the future where replying to a meta question does not take several hours of research to come up with an appropriate reply (I imagine most questions that show up on the meta site have been answered already so it is a matter of just finding the answer elsewhere in the Stack Exchange network than really coming up with your own).

I have been moderator pro tempore since last August. The part of the job that requires moderator privileges is minimal: processing edits made by and flags raised by users, e.g., by turning answers that are not really answer into comments.

I think the most important part of the moderator's job is to help maintain an appropriate scope for the site. For our small site, that includes quickly closing questions that are clearly out of scope (as gathering enough votes to close can take a while). It also includes starting discussions on Meta when discussion is helpful to define the scope. In order to do this well, it is important to be active on the site in order to get a good feel for what kinds of questions the community cares about.

So how well have I done as moderator? I'd give myself a B–. I have asked and answered 7 scope-related meta questions. On the other hand, I have been absent for weeks at a time. Both votes cast and rep are sensible measures for activity. I rank fifth in terms of votes cast, fourth in terms of all-time rep, but 32nd in terms of rep for the last quarter, indicating that many other users are more involved than me in the site now. I am also not particularly expert.

In summary, I'd be happy to continue to serve because I like the site and moderating is not much work, but I'd be equally happy to pass on the torch to someone else who is more heavily involved.