2017 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Question

Graphic Design Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, May 22nd. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Here's how it'll work:

• Until the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, May 22nd at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

• We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

• If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

• This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at current.

• At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.

• Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.

• This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

Answer 1

This site has always seen a significant influx of low quality questions, especially tech support. This is unlikely to ever change, because it seems for a lot of beginners graphic design equals design software.

Recent initiatives have sought to alleviate this issue. Although these are a good start, they alone will not stop the torrent of low quality and tech support questions.

As I understood from recent discussions, there are two approaches to this issue:

1. Bear down on low quality posts with downvotes and close votes

2. Incite better questions to set an example and 'drown out' low quality posts

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What would be your strategy to help alleviate this issue? How would you go about raising the question standard? Do you see other approaches next to the two listed above?

Answer 2

One of the most delicate situations is flags and issues with long time members. Some more than others feel a sense of entitlement which they have valid reasons for. At the same time, we need to recognize the delicate line between respecting all that they've done for the community and acknowledging when they're perpetuating issues or putting off potential new members.

How will you handle having to approach a member that may have been a part of this community much longer than the other person in question, and quite possibly longer than you?

Answer 3

GDSE has a few sister sites on the SE network that can be seen as close to our core theme, or at least affiliated.

A few examples:

• ux.se, e.g. UI design, usability
• blender.se, e.g. 3D design
• arts & crafts, e.g. print & physical media
• photography.se, e.g. post-production
• computer graphics, e.g. image processing
• the 3D.se proposal was sadly closed

Even the Project Management stack or Stackoverflow can be said to have something to do with graphic design.

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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?

Answer 4

Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

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

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• In your opinion, what do moderators do?
• 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?
• In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Answer 5

All Most actions you take as a moderator; flagging, close voting, deleting etc. are now binding and will take effect immediately, without input from other users...

Will you (and if so; how) adapt your current flagging and voting to accommodate this?