Cryptography's 1st moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 3 new moderators are:
They've replaced the pro tempore mods — please thank both groups for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with the new crew as they learn the ropes!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here, or view a summary report online.
Congratulations to all the elected moderators, and also thanks to the other candidates who didn't get elected.
Having elected moderators is a step from having only appointed ones.
There were some questions on why I (one of the pro tempore moderators for almost four years) didn't run as candidate in this election.
TL;DR: I think I would not be a good moderator.
I found (and committed to) the proposal for Crypto SE some days before the start of private beta in July 2011, and joined on the first day (thus my low user ID of 58). Back then I had much free time, and invested that into Crypto SE – both meta activity (the very first meta question was from me), reading almost every question and many answers, editing and improving questions and answers, answering myself, and occasionally asking questions, too. And, in order to be able to answer stuff, I did read about cryptography. Mostly guided from links in questions and answers, I read lots of articles (sometimes in Wikipedia, but often also papers).
Some weeks later (in August, I guess), I was asked (together with some other top users at the time) by Stack Exchange Staff if I would agree to be moderator pro tempore for some time until the graduation (at least three months of public beta). Optimistically (and naïve) as I was back then, I said »Okay, for three months I can do this, but I surely will not take long-term responsibility and be a candidate on the first elections«.
I already had some moderation experience as a 10k-user on Stack Overflow, but now I got the full power ... and I used it, closing questions, migrating stuff away, and so on. For some time I was about daily for several hours hanging around in the Teacher's Lounge (a moderator-only chat room for all Stack Exchange moderators).
Later (end of 2011) I got a job (thanks to Stack Overflow Careers, actually), and thus less time on hand. I still was quite active here, but my activity got less and less with time.
Fortunately, the rest of the users became (on average) more active, and less moderation was necessary. In July and October of 2012 my initial co-moderators stepped down, and Mikeazo and Hendrik Brummermann (who was not a that active user here, but also a moderator on security.SE, which helped the coordination about migrations) replaced them.
In the last year (or a year and a half, maybe?) my moderator activity was almost zero, and Mikeazo did most of it. Both in my own name, and in the name of the site I'll have to thank Mike for his engagement.
I often simply didn't feel like deciding what to do on flags. Even when I started looking at flags, I was often distracted by interesting titles in the "Hot Network Questions" list and didn't finish anything.
I guess I should have stepped down already back then, but I didn't. But I certainly knew already then that I would not run for moderator when the elections would come, and I didn't (though I did vote, as my Constituent badge proves).
I'm happy that five candidates stepped forward, and three of them got elected – I'm sure each of the five (and three) would have been a better moderator than if I was elected.
I will now be a regular user, and might even use my close-votes and flags again. (I just got a Deputy badge when I lost my moderator privileges – I guess flags handled while being a moderator count too.)
I'm looking forward to site graduation, and I hope that I'll get that t-shirt then. Good luck to the moderators, and Cryptography Stack Exchange!
I´ld like to thank all voters for putting their confidence in me. I´ll do my best to live up to the trust you´ve put in me. (While I can only speak for myself, I´m confident this goes for all three of us.)
Btw.: If anyone ever feels the need to talk to me for whatever reason – I have updated my profile to include some additional contact options in case I am not immediately available via the SE network. Ping me whenever you think it´s applicable. I´ll be sure to get back at you as soon as possible.
