Terdon

1. What timezone are you in and when will you be most active? The moderators we have now cover quite a broad range of times throughout the day, but there are a handful of times when there are no moderators around (Friday evening, PST, for example).

I'm in UTC+3. I work during the day, but I tend to keep an AU tab open when at work, so I will be around during working hours for stretches of a few minutes at a time. In other words, here for an emergency or the occasional flag but not for idle chatter. Most of my AU time is in the evenings.

2. As the site gains more and more moderators, it will become increasingly important for the existing moderators to think and act alike so that we the laymen can can know what to expect, regardless of which moderator is acting. Describe your relationship with the present moderators and why you would expect them (and not just us) to trust you as a moderator as well.

While I haven't directly interacted with all the current moderators, I have with most of them and said interactions have always been friendly and civil. I have most often interacted with Seth, Oli, fossfreedom, James and jokerdino who are most active in chat. They've never given me reason to believe they have any issues with me and I know I have nothing but respect for them and I'm sure we'll have no problems working together. Well, I'll admit they are misguided when it comes to the question of the editor war, but I'm guess we can work around that.

3. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable questions/answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags in comments and chat?

I have had to deal with this as a moderator on U&L. The bottom line is that useful contributions are not an excuse to act like a $#%&!@#$. While I am prepared to take the user's contributions into account and would be more willing to take the time to chat with the user and try to explain the situation to them, at the end of the day, the rules are the same for everyone and suspensions are an option no matter who the user is.

So, I would first try to talk to the user and explain that their behavior is detrimental to the site but, if they kept up their shenanigans, I'd start doling out suspensions. No user, no matter how technically knowledgeable, is worth disrupting the smooth working of the site.

4. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I'd talk to the mod in question. Failing that, I'd talk it over with whichever other mod is available. If I'm reasonably certain that the mod closed it by mistake (yes, mods make mistakes), I'd undo the action. If it looks like it was on purpose, I'd leave a comment to the other mod asking them to explain their reasoning. Presumably, we'll be able to sort it all out. If not, and the other mod insists, I guess I'd probably leave it be. Unless it is some sort of egregious mod abuse, it isn't worth having a public disagreement over a closed question.

5. The existing moderator team doesn't always agree in private (the joke is if you ask 10 people the same question, you'll get 15 answers). What will you do if the majority of moderators are opposed to your point of view?

If the majority of moderators are wrong disagree with me, then I'd back down. If it is over something that I truly feel very strongly about and simply can't countenance accepting, I would resign as a mod. However, I find it very hard to think of anything that would merit such an extreme reaction. There are many mods here, enough that a majority vote should always win and I would have no trouble accepting that.

6. What do you think about setting up something like the Stack Overflow Close Vote Reviewers chat room (SOCVR)? Aside from a recent surge in first posts, our close vote review queue has always been rather large. Every year or so, we see posts to clean it up: 1 2 3. This has been suggested before, and IIRC, there is such a room, but inactive (and lacking publicity). While having a room by itself is not the issue, the queue size is. It's been agreed repeatedly over the years that it's a problem and something needs to be done about it. Thoughts?

Sure, having a room could be useful. Although we are already doing this (a little) in the main chat room. In any case, the only choice I see here is for mods to mod-hammer things closed faster. Having two extra mods on board means two more users with unlimited close votes. We should use them.

7. How would you deal with a feud between two users? Consider a case where two users have it in for each other and tend to downvote and/or negatively comment on each other's posts.

This is a hard one and I haven't found a perfect solution. The best I've come up with is to i) talk to both users and try to diffuse the situation. If possible, get them both into a chat room and try to reconcile them. ii) If that fails, forbid them from commenting on one another's posts on pain of suspension. They are, of course, still free to vote as they please but the absence of comments should help calm the situation. There's nothing we can do about their downvoting but at least, if they do it silently, the rest of the community is not affected.

8. How do you deal with established users who have gained reputation, badges and privileges by illicit means? This might seem silly but it has real world applications. Things like this, where >1k rep users do something really quite wrong, happen a couple of times a year. Dealing with it smoothly is important to the continued success of the site. Example scenario.

I would be in favor of invalidating any and all rep and badges gained through this. Assuming the evidence of wrongdoing is conclusive, I would also consider suspending the offending users. If they were actively trying to game the system, suspensions would seem to be in order. Having a decent amount of rep doesn't mean the rules don't apply to you.

In all cases, however, any action would have to be coordinated between the entire mod team and SE. It is very important for everyone to be on the same page when such drastic and public measures are taken.

9. How would you encourage users to improve their answer quality? For instance, someone who consistently copies another user's comments into an answer, more or less verbatim, without verifying that the information they're supplying is correct.

There's not much to do there. If they are just copying the comments (with correct attribution) I also don't see anything wrong with it. Dealing with bad/wrong answers is not a moderator's prerogative. That's what downvotes are for. If a user provides consistently downvoted answers, the user will eventually be automatically blocked from answering by the system.

10. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Ideally, very little. On a healthy site, moderators are pretty much invisible. They work behind the scenes, cleaning up the trash and handling flags. The first role of a moderator is janitorial. Then, if an issue arises, the mod should step in and sort it out. I guess you could say that a mod is a cross between a janitor and a kindergarten teacher¹. That's how it feels sometimes anyway :)

To use the SE terminology, moderators are human exception handlers. They should hover invisibly doing their janitorial work when everything is working smoothly but be ready to step in and ensure the calm and constructive nature of user's interactions on the site when necessary.

¹_{This is not to say that users are like children. Only that problematic users often behave as children. A moderator has little reason to deal with normal, constructive users. It's the ones who act like squabbling children that are the problem and those can make one feel like a kindergarten teacher.}