You wanted answers? You got 'em! Prepare for a wall of the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a madman! I take full responsibility, including typo's, stupid jokes and unfinished sente
If you want more info on anything, you'll probably find me in chat.
What is your relationship, interest and experience in the field of Graphic Design?
I took some introductory courses in college. I think I'm an OK designer, though I lack a lot of experience to be called a professional. My day job is front-end developer, so I convert designs to code and work with assets delivered by clients. I have seen things you people wouldn't believe, thousands of unnamed layers, embedded documents within embedded documents, raster images saved as vector files. All those, horrors, will remain in my nightmares, forever. Joking aside, I'm handling design related things almost every day of my life, and I dabble in design in my free time.
Beyond merely having additional privileges and access on the site, why would you want to be a moderator?
I want the power!
Apart from that, I have a lot of experience with online platforms, and being a moderator (or some such role) on a lot of them. I know a good moderator can make a big difference in user experience and perception of a community.
What I'm hoping to bring to the table in this mod team is exactly what I've been doing before: being active in chat, being active on Meta, helping users both new and old use and understand the Stack. Might has well have the ♦ to go with it.
What I won't be bringing to the table is: loads of time, nightly chat sessions, rudeness, politics, bigotry, a demigorgon or power plays.
What is your view on the interaction between our stack and other stacks? Do you think cooperation is necessary, or even viable? How would you approach members of those communities into our community? Would you encourage our members to become active in those communities also?
I knew this would bite me in the rear end :D
I do think there is a pretty large crossover between some stacks and us, most notably UX. I think it would be interesting to reach out to their regular users (i.e. their chat room). Maybe share our bountied questions in their chat and vice versa. Reboot the monthly design challenge and advertise it in their chatroom also. Just a few ideas.
A moderator role that is unusually relevant in this community (as opposed to others) is taking “political” initiative, i.e., steering the community by means of meta posts and similar. What are your ambitions in this respect? Are there any pressing issues you would like to address and how do you plan to do so?
To answer the last first: no, I don't think there are any pressing issues at the moment. Picking up the Critique discussion where we left it off might be interesting.
I think I have already been contributing to these discussions, and I don't plan on stopping. Frankly, I don't think making me a mod is going to have a huge impact on my contributions in this regard.
Name an individual action that showcases your suitability as a moderator, for example an individual meta post, review action, or comment (please provide a link to it). Why do you think that this a good example?
I think most of my Meta contributions qualify, but I'm still proud of this answer. I think it strikes the right balance between being strict without being belligerent. Although I am not sure the same answer from someone in the mod team would've been accepted so readily by the asker.
I also still stand by this answer.
Recently, there have been tentative ideas to be more open to Critique questions than we have been in the past. What is your stance on this and the way it is being decided? Were/are there things you would do differently? How would you contribute to this process and discussion?
As I said, picking up this discussion would be interesting.
Although the Meta Q&A format has its limitations (eg for extended discussions), it does force one into shaping their thoughts before posting. So I think it's a good process to have.
All in all, how this site works should be decided by its users: the community. Ironically, the only answers to the mentioned post have been given by mods. But to be honest, I don't see this as a problem: the discussion is open to the community members, whether they choose to participate is up to them.
How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
Talk it over with the mod team to see if they noticed something similar or I'm just seeing ghosts. If I'm not alone, talk to the user to see what they think might be the issue, and if they're willing to change their behaviour/tone of voice. If they persist, issue a warning. And if really necessary a suspension after ample warnings.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
Mods are volunteers and people. I might take it up in (mod) chat with them, especially if I notice this more than once. If there really is an obvious dispute between multiple mods, I think it needs to be taken to the community. If it's nothing too big or if it's just me, I'll probably Let it go.
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
I stand by everything I said and did in the past, so I do not mind it getting the mod stamp.
Bu I'm very weary of always wearing the mod hat, because it means I will no longer be 'neutral', a role I have taken up quite a bit in the past. A user who had a bad experience with one mod will be weary of all mods, because they've been talking 'behind the screens'. It's good to have a few non-mod regulars who can then step in to 'negotiate'. By nominating myself, I'm hoping another regular will step up to take this role.
How many graphic designers does it take to change a lightbulb?
One to design what the new iLightbulb™ will look like.
Additionally:
one Art Director to 'streamline' the designs of iLightbulb™,
one Project Manager to map out the iLightbulb™ project in Kanban views and Gantt charts,
one Scrum Master to keep an overview of the iLightbulb™ project scope and align interests,
a crew of engineers to design the machine that will produce the new iLightbulb™ in China,
a Safety Advisor to make sure everyone follows protocol,
several lawyers to consider the legal implications of the information gathering capacities of iLightbulb™,
no one to write documentation for the iLightbulb™ project,
several Marketeers to push ads onto social media telling people interested in shoes that this is the new iLightbulb™ to have because it connects to your smartwatch,
a Programmer to write an API for iLightbulb™ so it can integrate with your CRM,
several middle Managers telling everyone to copy the competition's uLightbulb™,
and finally one CEO to take none of the responsibility if it all goes South.