2011 Moderator Election

nomination began
Jan 31, 2011 at 20:00
election began
Feb 7, 2011 at 20:00
election ended
Feb 15, 2011 at 20:00
candidates
7
positions
3

On Stack Exchange, we believe the core moderators should come from the community, and be elected by the community itself through popular vote. We hold regular elections to determine who these community moderators will be.

Community moderators are accorded the highest level of privilege on our community, and should themselves be exemplars of positive behavior and leaders within the community.

Our general criteria for moderators is as follows:

  • patient and fair
  • leads by example
  • shows respect for their fellow community members in their actions and words
  • open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions
  • signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, 2.0, and link to your Launchpad.net page showing you have signed.

We encourage everyone who has contributed to the success of Ask Ubuntu through all moderation tasks - flagging, editing, Meta Q&A, chat discussions etc. to put their names forward.

Every election has three phases:

  1. Nomination
  2. Primary
  3. Election

Please participate in the moderator elections by voting, and perhaps even by nominating yourself to be a community moderator!

Nominees, please consider placing your answers to questions you deem helpful to your nomination inside your Nomination post.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears...

Don't worry, that's all the Shakespeare you're getting from me today. I've seen several nominations around the StackExchange universe and thought at somebody aught to take things a little less seriously.

As a result my nomination is going to be somewhat more colloquial.

Hi everybody. My name is Oli and I'm an AskUbuntu-o-Holic.

I have a good sense of humour, love watching sunsets on the beach and I give great back massages. When I'm not joking around, staring into the fading sun, rubbing backs or working as a freelance web developer, I'm probably on AskUbuntu.

My record here probably speaks for itself but I don't think it would be fair to myself not to just go over the highlights. I have the highest reputation on the site by some margin and that's mostly been attainable through my slightly sickening uptime: I've been on the site for the last 182 days, straight. Even had a look around on Christmas Day.

Other bio garb: I'm 26. I'm a blogger. I love Python and the command line. I have a fervent dislike for the design-driven dumbing-down of user-interfaces that I've witnessed over the past five years. And I have no formal affiliation with Ubuntu or Canonical, I'm a user.

Why I'd be an awesome moderator

For people voting who might not have much moderation experience, you need to realise one simple fact about the job: moderation works best in teams.

It's important to stress that because it really is something that becomes much easier when you can break the workload between several people rotating in and out throughout the day so there's as little "build-up" as possible. I'm a good pick because I'm already here several dozen times a day (I even check it in bed on my phone) and that would help keep the jobs to a minimum.

From what I've seen some of the existing moderators have been great at promoting and helping the AskUbuntu brand by pulling people in but when it comes down to spending time on the site trawling for issues, that's mostly fallen on the shoulders of one guy (and Jorge, The Editmeister).

I'm not slinging mud. Those moderators have done a fantastic job in promoting the site but I feel I would do a better job with the tools that moderators have, improving the site from the inside.

But do I lead by example? Am I patient, diligent, sexy and fair? Am I community-orientated or do I just want to rule the kingdom?

I try to. Yes. Yes. You should see my mankini. Yes. And I love our community.

We could drill into each of these but I think it's clear to anybody who's seen me here that I love AskUbuntu just as much as I love helping people. And on meta I love giving my opinion just as much as I like having it changed by somebody else's perspective.

But most of all, I'm just here to help people.

Over to you

We're not set a formal word limit on these things but I can almost sense through the screen that you're getting bored of reading through this. Just make sure when it comes to the moment, you spend five minutes going over each candidate and vote for somebody.

Now, who's willing to take a bribe?

PS: Geoff Dalgas stole my post's kitten.

I would like to be considered. I know most of the guys who nominated themselves, nice guys.

I am good with communities, and a decently well versed in Ubuntu. I would appreciate your support.

Thanks and Please. :)

tl;dr vote dustyprogrammer

As a current Pro Tempore Moderator I take pride in visiting the site almost every day - cleaning up posts, helping new users understand the system, and offering support to those who need it.

I have helped shape the community as a current site moderator (and member of the original private beta) to its current state and look forward to continuing the progress of sheer awesomeness this site has continued to show. On meta I answer questions as frequently as possible and ask questions when needed to help round out the site's governing rules.

Unfortunately, I'm not perfect; I've been working on it for years, but still not there yet. I know I'm not perfect and I completely understand that. As current acting moderator I've made mistakes. Hastily closed questions, or other such actions. What sets me apart from others who make mistakes is I'm always willing to reverse an action when the community wants me to, as I have those few times mistakes do happen!

Whenever a decision on an item isn't clear I always turn to the community for feedback - typically though chat or comments - to ensure I am ALWAYS acting on behalf of the community and never on "what I want". I've taken to heart A Theory of Moderation the moment it was created and continue to use my best judgement to be the arms of the Community, enforcing and executing the will of those collective users who can't. I can go on about how I approach each issue but I think that's apparent in the actions I've performed. I can answer specific questions though in the comments to this or on meta

I always make sure I'm available - whether it's through chat, meta, or email - if a user has a question or problem I want to make sure they get the right information as quickly as possible.

If elected I plan on helping new moderators understand the tools of the site as well as continuing my daily activities of moderation and support.

I would like to nominate myself for Ask Ubuntu community moderator.

I have been an active member of the site since its creation, contributing many valuable answers and asking many questions too. I have done my best to close questions only as a last resort, attempting to fix them up if at all possible. I have been very active on the General Room in chat as well.

Many of you know me more for my applications that I have contributed over the months to Ask Ubuntu. Namely:

I have been a big fan of Ubuntu ever since I made the switch to it in May last year. I find it to be very efficient, easy to use, and well-stocked with packages in the repositories. If I am elected, I pledge to continue to promote Ubuntu and help keep the site maintained.

Being a long-term supporter and contributor to Ubuntu, I was privileged to learn a lot about the Ubuntu community.

I have been supporting and promoting AskUbuntu from shortly after its proposal until today, and have been a Moderator Pro Tempore since the first appointment of them. I regularly try to raise the awareness of this site by blogging about it (http://drupal.txwikinger.me.uk).

Before helping out at AskUbuntu, I have been active on the launchpad support site, and doing bug triage. I have also been appointed as an IRC Ops for the #kubuntu channel.

I am also the contact for the Ubuntu Canada LoCo (http://ubuntu-ca.org) and the Kubuntu Germany Team (http://kubuntu-de.org).

Also due to having manager positions in my career, I have had the privilege of learning how to resolve conflict situations with patience and endurance.

Since I really like the concept we are pursuing here, and my goal is to make this site a very good place for the Ubuntu community to find answer to their problems and also to contribute back to others by contributing good questions and answers, I am willing to give some of my time to help facilitate such a great project if the community would like me to do so.

I love Ask Ubuntu. In only four months since we launched the way people get answers to their Ubuntu questions has been revolutionised. That's why I want to stand to be a moderator: to help make our site even better and therefore to help the Ubuntu community as a whole progress.

I come at the site from an Ubuntu point of view, whilst I'm familiar with the rest of the Stack Exchange network and the ways things work in SE land, I will always campaign for the needs of the Ubuntu community.

I'm a strong believer in continuing the use on the site of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and Assume Good Faith. I want to make the experience for visitors to our site as positive as possible.

I think it's wonderful that the current moderators have been working on behalf on the community, not against it, and I'm sure that will continue. If I think things could be controversial then I would (as I do at present) post them on Meta, but if there's no opposition I would go ahead and swiftly make the changes.

Since I hit 2000 rep I've been addicted to editing, flagging - cleanup work. I believe small things like editing posts to use capital letters can make our site look infinitely more professional. One of my "interests" is tagging. Moderators have access to some "tag tools" that I think I could utilise. The other moderator tool I would make sure I use if elected is the ability to convert answers to comments.

I'm quite active in our chat room - 2743 messages and counting... I think it's important for a moderating team to be part of the community - to be accessible to the community (as happens so well on our site at present).

If you're interested in me: I'm a student in the UK studying Further Maths, Physics, Computing, Politics and Music (I play the flute, hence my username, and also play the bassoon).

I'd like to put myself forward as a candidate.

I've been very active these last few months, and, in addition to my many answers, I've always had fun doing the more janitorial types of things.

  • Editing
  • re-tagging
  • flagging
  • closing and re-opening

Helping people to use the site as best I can.

  • You can always contact me in the chat.
    If elected, I will a be very responsive moderator, always available to talk to.

I'm enthusiastic and I want to help.

In addition to all this, I am reasonably active in the Ubuntu project itself. If you want to get a better picture of what I do on the site, have a look at my profile, and my chat profile.

If elected, I will

  • make an effort to integrate you in every decision

  • respond to your concerns and questions, quickly and helfpully

  • do my very best to resolve any conflict that might arise (even though there is very little of that going on here)

  • continue to answer, as much as I do now.

    I never get tired of answering questions. It's the best way to learn more about Ubuntu.

We are building the greatest Ubuntu support resource on the web (and anywhere else).
I want continue to do my part, and being a moderator will help me do more of that, more efficiently.

This election is over.