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

The Workplace Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-10-31. 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.

Here’s how it’ll work:

  • Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2022-10-31 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.

  • 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 currently.

  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

    • 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?

  • The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

    • 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?

  • 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. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

    • We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
    • 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.

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From last year and the election before that:

We get a good amount of hot questions on provocative topics. Sometimes the questions seem so incredible that people question whether they are genuine. Sometimes the questions seem genuine but evoke strong negative reactions. Either way, these questions attract a lot of attention, comments, flags, and discussion in chat. How should questions like these be moderated?

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    I'll be sitting this one out. I don't like how they have been handled in the past.
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Commented Oct 27, 2022 at 13:00
  • @Old_Lamplighter last one seemed ok, I don't remember you running though
    – Kilisi Mod
    Commented Oct 30, 2022 at 11:55
  • @Kilisi Last time I ran, Monica was still here,
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Commented Nov 5, 2022 at 3:37
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Why do you want to be a TWP moderator?

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According to SE statistics available here, the number of questions posted daily on The Workplace is 3.1. There is also evidence that suggests the community's most popular network questions are made exclusively by throwaway accounts, new contributors who never edit or even post a comment once their question is submitted.

  • To what extent do you consider the low number of questions a problem for the site?
    What can be done to encourage participation and engage new users?
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  • Observation: that 3.1 is averaged "over the last 2 weeks" (source, the link you included)... meaning that the last two weeks have been "slower" than others... there are days where we get a lot more Qs, so perhaps that 3.1 may be a bit misleading
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Commented Oct 31, 2022 at 20:05
  • @DarkCygnus I lack the necessary rep that grants me access to the site's tools, namely the analytics section. However, I don't imagine seeing a huge difference in the number of questions submitted since March of this year. I might be wrong, maybe there is a SEDE query somewhere. Nevertheless, three or six questions daily is still a low number.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Oct 31, 2022 at 20:28
  • Low number compared to? Stackoverflow? Surely... perhaps low and high are relative... anyways, the second Q of the bullet point you included is very useful
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Commented Oct 31, 2022 at 20:38
  • I went to the analytics and can say that the average this year is around 5 or 6 FWIW... I can also say that the data seems to suggest a drop in posts since, say, 2020. Thus, although the number you posted is lower than the real one, the essence of the Q you suggest is valid.
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Commented Oct 31, 2022 at 20:45
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    Why should a moderator be concerned about the volume of new questions? Is it a sales position? It seems to me that things have slowed down since work-from-home picked up, but perhaps that's just a coinidence.
    – Joe Strazzere
    Commented Nov 1, 2022 at 16:53
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    @joe I guess I must be different from you then. For me, low participation is a worrying signal that something is not working, it wouldn't be so bad if the hugely popular network questions were not nearly always from throwaway accounts. I understand why someone would seek anonymity but why do they rarely, if ever, post clarifications or updates in the comment section?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 2, 2022 at 0:33
  • @Mari-LouA - so you feel that driving participation numbers is part of a moderator's role?
    – Joe Strazzere
    Commented Nov 2, 2022 at 10:17
  • The behaviour of a few moderators can be responsible for driving users away, yes. I don't think that's the case here, the mods seem generally even-keeled but how a moderator welcomes a new user can have a strong impact.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 3, 2022 at 3:54
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How will you approach moderation on a Workplace/HR question that touches on current political issues in corporate life, such as Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation?

Will you be adopting the Collective, intersectional view or an Individualist view?

What steps will you be taking to ensure that your own views do not colour (pun intended) your moderation?

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  • I feel this falls into the Q I posted (as in provocative/sensitive topics), but that may be my perception. What I do suggest is to completely avoid puns in important questions and processes, such as a Site Election... Professionalism is paramount for this site and we should reflect that in what we post
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Commented Oct 31, 2022 at 20:40

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