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This change has been executed. See my answer below for more information.

We've noticed a number of remarks in the SharePoint election chatroom and elsewhere indicating some confusion about how the nomination phase of the current election was supposed to work. We suspect that as a result, fewer folks nominated themselves for this election than we would notionally expect given the size of the site. This includes some of your most active members.

So, we're in a bit of an unusual situation.

Would you all like to either:

  1. Restart the election, or
  2. Let the election stand as is?

We haven't done something like this before, but I'm proposing this now because I'd really like to see this site's election draw the interest and attention it deserves.

Essentially, we would cancel the currently-running election, and begin another election this Monday, October 26th, starting over from the nominations phase. At this point, between October 26th and November 2nd, folks would again have the chance to nominate themselves for a moderator position. The existing candidates would need to re-nominate themselves.

There were no questions on the question collection post, and I'd be inclined to let that stand, but if anyone strongly feels question collection should be re-run, this would be the time to say it.

If you all do opt for the first choice, and believe the election should be restarted, I would highly recommend directly soliciting nominations from candidates you feel are qualified to run. It's not a small task to run in a Stack election, and encouraging folks to run whom you respect and trust on the site may go a long way to ensuring the elections themselves generate a reasonable amount of interest.

If we are going to restart this election, we need to know this information at latest by 20:00 UTC on Monday, October 26th, the day before the currently-scheduled election would advance.

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My vote would be to restart the election. There is at least one extremely promising candidate that was unable to nominate due to missing the nomination period. Normally, I'd say that's unfortunate, but try again next year.

However, with all due respect to the two candidates who did nominate, I frankly don't see them as having anywhere near enough experience to become a moderator. The amount of site interaction they have is literally the bare minimum to even qualify for nomination. Continuing with the current candidate pool would likely do a disservice to the site and mod team/CM team, who would have to do an excessive amount of onboarding.

I would strongly encourage the two current candidates to re-nominate in a future election, after they have had some experience performing more of the basic user moderation activities required of elected moderators, like voting up/down, closing, and deleting (once they've earned some of those privileges).

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    I tried to keep my answer here respectful of the two current nominees. If anyone feels it's over the line or disrespectful in any way, please edit/suggest an edit. My concern is the interest of the site over the interest of any individual person, but I don't want to be disrespectful.
    – TylerH
    Commented Oct 19, 2021 at 14:43
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    I think your post was respectful. I don't blame the two people who self-nominated as I get it. I too felt their participation rate was sadly lacking to be at the level needed to be a moderator. Being a moderator myself on another stack, I know what it takes. I'd like to see this election restarted as well, so agreeing with you and @GaneshSanap in this regard. Again, no disrespect to the two individuals who self-nominated, their candidate scores are just not where I'd want them to be WRT activity and what it takes to be a Mod on ANY stack.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Commented Oct 19, 2021 at 17:46
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Thank you very much Slate for starting this discussion.

I am voting for restarting the SharePoint election because it seems there are multiple experienced users on this site who are already moderating the site & very much active on Review queues but missed their nominations.

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After community consensus and CM team review, we have decided to restart the election.

Your new election schedule is as follows. Please pay careful attention to the dates - these are hard deadlines.

  1. On October 25th, your Nomination phase will open. For the next week, please nominate yourselves, and encourage folks who are active on the site to nominate as well. One week is allowed for this phase (two, if and only if there are two or fewer candidates, but this is unlikely).
  2. On November 1st, your Election phase will begin. Any candidates nominated on the prior phase will advance and folks will be able to vote on those candidates. If you have not nominated yourself by November 1st, you will not run in this election.
  3. On November 9th, the election outcome will be decided as normal.

If you have any questions, now would be the time to ask. Good luck to the future nominees!

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