Ilmari Karonen's user profile and nomination.
What do you think Crypto.SE's biggest challenge is? (E.g. question/answer quality/quantity, too many/few closures, too many/few questions of a certain type, bad tools/guidance, …) What do you think should be done about this (not necessarily as a moderator, it's ok if this requires the whole community or Stack Exchange staff)?
I think the biggest challenge we're facing right now (as always, and for almost every SE site) is dealing with the growth of the site, and the ever increasing question volume, in a way that keeps the site both interesting to the core expert contributors and welcoming to new users (or at least to most of them).
Right now it's summer, and the question volume is low, but I suspect we're going to see a new wave of low level (and often low quality) questions come September, when the schools start. When that comes, both the mods and the reviewers are going to be busy dealing with it. The challenge will be in doing it in a way that maintains the quality of the site, while not driving away either the new or the established contributors.
Votes of moderators are definitive. If a moderators votes to close a question he doesn't need to ask anyone and none has to agree before the question is closed. With this in mind, will you change your voting activity (= vote more / less / equally often) if you'd be elected?
I suspect I will be casting fewer close votes than before, at least initially, because I can no longer rely on the automatic sanity check of requiring four more votes from other users.
On the other hand, having instant closing powers means I can also instantly reverse any poor closures I might make, should anyone voice their disagreement (and I very much hope they will).
So there are also situations where I might see myself, as a mod, being more willing to put a question temporarily on hold while it's being fixed, knowing that I'll be around to reopen it as soon as it's ready to be answered. Of course, that's the kind of thing I'd certainly want to get some community feedback on, before doing it on a large scale. But it is something I've seen done frequently on some other SE sites, and it has worked pretty well for those communities. It could be worth trying here too.
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?
Fortunately, I don't think we currently have any such problem users here on Crypto.SE, but I've certainly seen such situations on other sites. They're problematic because they lead to a conflict between two essential aspects of Stack Exchange: on one hand, for the site to be any good as a reference, we need a core community of skilled and active experts to provide good answers and uphold the quality of the site; on the other hand, civility is also a core value of SE, and essential for maintaining a healthy and welcoming atmosphere and allowing new members to enter the community.
Certainly, in such a situation, I'd work hard to find some way to eliminate the friction while letting the user keep contributing to the site. This might involve contacting the user privately, or inviting them to a discussion with other mods, to see if there's anything I can do to help them contribute in a less abrasive manner.
Ultimately, though, I'd also have to keep in mind that none of us is truly irreplaceable. If a single user is poisoning the atmosphere at the site, and driving other potentially valuable contributors away, then the community may be better off without them. Sometimes, no matter how skilled they may be in other ways, some people just don't have the social skills to fit in some communities. There are other ways (blogs, journals, Wikipedia, etc.) for them to share their expertise with the world, and we can still reference their contributions in answers here if we want.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
I'd talk with them, of course. Should it seem necessary, I'd seek a third opinion, either from other mods, from the community (via meta), or from SE.
I don't think "wheel wars" are ever a good idea, but on the other hand, I do also expect everyone to use common sense. I certainly hope that, if I make some obvious mistake with the mod tools, other mods will feel free to fix it even if they can't immediately contact me.
You've just deleted / closed a question alone (with your super-vote). The author is accusing you of abuse of your moderator powers, via meta or chat. How do you react?
I'll talk with them. If there's any reasonable doubt, and no specific reason to do otherwise, I'll likely also undelete / reopen the question while the matter is being discussed. If the eventual consensus is that the question should indeed be deleted / closed, I or some other mod can always re-delete / close it, or (in most cases) we can just let the community handle it.
Of course, that's assuming a reasonable complaint. If the person complaining is clearly acting in bad faith, grossly abusive or just plain insane, or has a history of acting so, I may prefer not to give them the attention they seek. (Alas, yes, such people do exist, and you'll run into them if you spend enough time online.) Even then, I expect I'll at least mention the issue privately to other mods, just to get a second opinion.
Moderators have more to do, because they can do more. Will you change your activity pattern (= be more / less / equally active) on Crypto SE if you would be elected?
As a mod, I'd probably be more active here, at least as far as moderator-y stuff is concerned. I tend to have a lot of things competing for my time and attention, but as a moderator here, I'd at least have to set a certain amount of time aside for that every day, as far as possible.
(BTW, this is probably a good place to note that, due to summer camps that I'm organizing, I'm going to have very limited net access for the two weeks immediately following this election. Thus, if elected, I probably won't really have much chance to properly start my moderation duties before mid-July or so. That's not really something I can do anything about at this point, since I booked those weeks and signed the contracts several months ago.)
Everything you say or said will be seen as "definitive" / "official" reference in crypto. Do you think you're wise enough for this kind of responsibility? How do you feel about this perception?
I post under my real name, and I generally try not to act in a way that I wouldn't want associated with that name. Hopefully, that's also good enough for SE. I don't know if I'm wise, but at least I try not to be a complete fool, even if I do make mistakes sometimes, like everyone else.
I certainly hope that having a ♦ after my name won't suddenly make people mistake me for a "definitive" authority on crypto. Certainly, I'll try not to give any such impression. That's why I have the disclaimer in my user profile. :)
Writing this, though, it does occur to me that, compared to the general population, even I am a crypto expert of sorts; the old saying about the one-eyed man in the land of the blind comes to mind. I'm not sure how that makes me feel. Slightly scared, perhaps.
We already had questions on crypto where the author modified the question heavily (30+ edits), extended it and asked to answer the updated question, which was based on the answers given to a previous version. How would you handle such a situation?
In SE jargon, these are called "chameleon questions", and there's a lot of discussion about them behind that link. They're typically symptomatic of an inexperienced user who doesn't really know what to ask, or one who's unfamiliar with Stack Exchange and thinks it's more like a discussion forum.
In my experience, these things are highly situational, but usually, if the question has been changed enough to completely invalidate existing good answers, the proper thing to do is to suggest to the author that they revert their question to its original form, and that they ask the modified version as a separate question. It may also be appropriate to revert the question yourself, and leave a comment to the author explaining why you did so, but this does require some care and tact to avoid needlessly offending the asker.
That said, sometimes it may also be appropriate to leave the edited question as it is, e.g. if the original version was very vague or borderline off topic, even if that means invalidating some early answers. Or sometimes it may be possible to edit the question into a form that incorporates both the original and the revised question, and that can be practically answered in a way that covers both of them. It all depends on the specifics.
In your opinion, what do moderators do?
As I wrote when I ran for moderator on Math.SE last winter, I believe moderators have two main jobs:
To act as a janitor and/or a handyman, doing stuff like handling flags, nuking spam, migrating misplaced questions and generally doing all the little fiddly tasks that other users either can't or just don't have time to do.
To act as a moderator, smoothing tempers, guiding new users and generally trying to keep the community friendly, welcoming and professional. (Obviously, that also involves setting a good example myself, but that should apply to everyone anyway.) Mods don't really have any special powers for that (well, expect for private messages, and, as the nuclear option, account suspension), but it still comes with the job and the diamond.
We're lucky here on Crypto.SE not to have (so far) had nearly as much need for the second aspect of the job as many other SE communities have had. This really is a nice, professional and smoothly running little community with little if any interpersonal drama. But that doesn't make that aspect any less important in general.
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
There are several things that ♦ mods can do that regular users cannot, not even at 20k rep (or 4k, while we're still partially in beta). Moderators can handle custom flags, migrate questions (to any SE site, not just between main and meta), (un)delete comments and merge duplicate questions and tags. I believe those are the kinds of things I could help with. In some situations, I suspect the ability to instantly close and reopen questions could come in handy too.
(I should also note that having access to the SE moderator interface would make it easier for me to add fixes to that interface into SOUP. That's probably not a very good reason to elect me, though.)
