Alan Munn
I've been an active member of the site for almost 11 years, and have tried to help it grow into what most people think is one of the friendliest sites in the network. I think we've achieved this by focusing a lot on helping new users improve both questions and answers through comments rather than participating in a "dog-eat-dog" downvoting/competing answers system. One of the big advantages of having developed such a culture on the site is that the need for very active moderation, much less heavy handed moderation, is kept to a minimum. As a moderator I would strive to maintain that record, which I think is exemplary on the Stackexchange network as a whole.
I've learned a lot from the site and also contributed a lot, and becoming a moderator would be another way for me to give back to the community.
- 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?
First and foremost, I would try to engage with the person (perhaps along with the other moderators) to try to see how we could convince the person that their behaviour (no matter how justified they might think it is) is causing issues and they should think about ways to adjust it. Valuable content itself is not a sufficient reason to keep such users around. I think in many cases the convincing has to be of the sort that says roughly "just let things go". But of course each individual case is different.
- How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?
Closure by moderators is fairly infrequent on the site, so in reality this problem might not arise very often. Closure is usually done by voting. But as with any closure, if you can make a good case that a question should be reopened, it usually can be (again by the community). But to answer the specific question, I would simply talk to the moderator and make my case, and reopen or leave closed depending on the outcome of that discussion.
- How will you handle a disagreement with another moderator over an action one of you has taken (or will be taking) on a post that requires moderator attention?
This is pretty much the same question as Question 2. If there are contentious decisions to be made, it's probably best to involve all three moderators to discuss things and make a decision by consensus. And since everything can be undone, there's not a problem to undo an action (perhaps with an appropriate explanation or even an apology if needed). Of course we hope these events if they do happen, do so rarely, which in my experience is the case.
- How would you handle this situation: An earlier question is a duplicate or near-duplicate of a new one, the top answer to the older question appears out of date, a new answer to the old question would be buried at the bottom and would never realistically be seen by people who would benefit from it.
This definitely happens from time to time, and it's perfectly reasonable to merge the questions or point the duplicate in the other direction. I've asked our existing moderator team to do that in the past, and they've always been happy to do so when it seemed appropriate.
- In which time zone do you live?
I'm in the US (Eastern Time zone)
- How would you handle this situation: A newbie has posted an answer that should more properly have been a comment, but the newbie doesn't have enough rep. Enough votes have been posted to delete it. A flag has been posted requesting conversion to a comment. Would you leave the deletion and ignore the flag, or convert the "answer" to a comment as requested by the flagger? Or would this depend on the content of the answer?
I think this would mainly depend on the content of the answer. But if it seems helpful to be a comment, I would simply make the conversion to a comment.
- How much time do you spend on TeX.SE a day?
I'm at least around most days, both on the site and in chat. The degree to which I'm actively answering questions is dependent a lot on my real work.
- What would you like to change about the current style of moderation? (If you would like to change anything.)
This is a bit of a loaded question. :) The vast majority of us have little or no interaction with the moderators in their moderator role and so our perception is "everything is fine". Of course the tiny subset of users who have interacted with the moderators as moderators may have a different view of things. But contentious issues that require moderation are by design kept quite private among the parties concerned, so unless you're specifically involved in one, you don't really have a sense of how the moderation works.
That being said, I would say that the main "style" of moderation of the site is very hands-off, (i.e., intervention only when absolutely necessary) and I agree completely with that style.
- In your opinion, what do moderators do?
I think the main role of the moderators is to keep the site running as smoothly as possible. As I mentioned in Question 8, I believe that a light handed style of moderation works well, especially for this site, and that means that other than regular housecleaning type activities moderators should let the community decide most things. A moderator should also be seen as not having an agenda (other than keeping the site healthy), and should be someone who any member of the community should feel comfortable contacting about issues they may be having. This means that moderators should be ready to listen, and in their dealings on the site strive to be fair.
- 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?
One of the things that has contributed to the nice community that we have here is that many active users contribute using their real names, and as a result most of us are quite aware that everything we post is publicly associated to us. I'm no exception here, so other than the fact that my 10 year old answers might not be as sophisticated as my 1 year old answers, I'm not too worried. (To be clear, I'm not casting aspersions on those who post under pseudonyms, but posting under one's real name certainly has a positive effect on what you post.)
