2016 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Question

In connection with the moderator elections, 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:

• During the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, March 28th 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.

• 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 end of the 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, 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 attracts many questions from new users, a number of whom may not be native speakers of English, especially for visa-related questions. Many such questions are closed due to missing details, poorly-written questions, questions that belong on Expatriates, and other issues. Many of these users seemingly never come back.

How do you believe the community, and specifically the moderators, should address these questions? To what extent do you believe questions should be "salvaged" vs closed? How can, or should, we better welcome and assist these new users, even when their initial questions may not meet the guidelines?

Answer 2

In the past there have been instances where questions have been asked which did not seem to arise from a real travel need, but which were of a hypothetical nature and sometimes about very unlikely subjects. (For instance 'Can I carry X on a plane', X being an very unusual item). This has caused some discussion and some unanimity among the community, as some saw the questions more as a means of attracting attention than a genuine need of a traveller.

What is your stance on this and how would you react as a moderator should such a situation come up again?

Answer 3

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 4

You see a question / answer that you personally consider naive, stupid, lying, missing info, etc. How do you handle this as a moderator? How do you respond to the user?

Answer 5

Two users are fighting, leaving snipey comments on questions/answers, in chat, etc. How would you deal with this?

Answer 6

Every so often the Travel Chat Room devolves a bit into mini fights between users, or worse, a group hate of a user on the site who has no knowledge of the chat. How would you engage and prevent the chat from scaring off new people, causing problems and starting disagreements?

Answer 7

New users, apply the rules or be nice ?

There's been quite a few first questions by newcomers that get closed or down voted very fast, because they're too vague or too broad (not considering the blatantly off-topic and attention grabbing).

How as a moderator will you choose to retain new users making sure we keep quality questions and a welcoming community ?

Answer 8

Since this is a travel Q&A, I suppose that you travel frequently. How do you plan to maintain a high availability for the moderation tasks while you travel?

I the answer is that you don't travel a lot the question becomes why you would stay motivated in the long run and not lose interest.