Why can't we have additional mods instead of replacing the current ones?

Question

Firstly, I'd like to state that the current mod team is excellent. Specifically because it's a great mixture of traits; Yisela the big empathetic heart, JohnB the peacemaker and AlanG the wise.

Next I'd like to empathise for a moment and wonder how it would feel to have worked so hard to bring this site to graduation and then only moderate for a very short period once graduated?

This site has been evolving constantly since before I joined and I think Yisela and JohnB have actively adapted to it and nurtured it along the way. I don't think any normal user is geared up to support this site as well as they do without a fair bit of practice. Therefore it'd be like spending valuable time training someone to do a specific task and then firing them.

I think it would be far better for the team to grow by one or two people. It should also be noted that since graduating, question cleanups appear to be taking slightly longer to me, and I think that's due to the large shift in rep required for privileges, so there are far less users with higher level privileges, increasing the strain on the mods and 10k+'s

Is there a specific reason, other than our low question-per-day-rate, why we can't have more than 3 mods?

Sometimes there are complex matters here that could benefit from additional minds, things that can't be quantified in statistics.

It would be good if our mods could share their thoughts on whether it would've been good to have additional full mod support or if it can be handled by 3 people, taking into account the likely growth of this site now.

Answer 1

The SE process is to nominate temporary moderators, and elect ones after the site graduates. Oftentimes the temporary moderators end up getting elected. Depending on the growth of this site, another election could be held soon to elect new moderators.

Note that once elected, until a moderator steps down or is forced to step down, one election is all that they need, second and third elections just add new people to the list.

Answer 2

Note: This was intended as a comment and then got too long. But first of all: thank you for these words Dominic! :)

I would like to see 4 mods for GD, and as you mention, maybe a mixture of oldies and new blood (rotation is good, so of course if all new mods are elected we ancient decrepit ones will happily share our knowledge on the fun world of internet trolls, spammers and flame-recruits).

But I think the main reason for having 4 mods instead of 3 is the amazing increase in activity the site has had in the last month. Just taking a quick look at the stats, we have tripled (true story) the number of visits, questions and answers. And I am seeing at least double the number of flags I saw before, for sure.

I think 3 people can probably handle the current level of activity, but I see GD.SE growing even more in the next months, so the site would definitely benefit from an extra person. Moderating is not just about the flags, or the commenting, and editing. It's also everything above the janitorial stuff, like posts on meta, events, even keeping the chat 'alive'. It all just takes time, but the less time spent on handling flags and such, the more time there will be to discuss and plan activities. Also, the more the merrier :)