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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.

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.

This is an alternative form of the Town Hall Chat system we've done in previous elections, we're trying some new things to test out how a different approach works.

Here's how it'll work.

  • During the nomination phase, (so, until November 4th 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 new process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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How would you attract more experts to the site?

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How would you resolve a dispute between two users?

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I belive it was Voltaire that said "With great power comes great responsibility".

Hence being a moderator takes a special kind of person that can handle conflicts objectively and unbiased.

Have you ever had disputes with other users that resulted in you beeing suspended from SharePoint Stackexchange?

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  • +1 Relevant quote from the first answer: "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?"
    – Stu Pegg
    Commented Nov 4, 2013 at 11:34
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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?
  • 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?
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  • These are all great questions, Grace! I'll be looking forward to answering them.
    – Mike
    Commented Nov 2, 2013 at 2:16
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What would you do to encourage the community to take advantage of chat?

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How would you improve the voting rate on the site?

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    Yes! We need this. It might seem like a trivial issue. But it's hard to attract people if the community seems apathetic.
    – Robert Kaucher
    Commented Nov 1, 2013 at 19:35
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What would you do to get new users to become returning contributors at SP.SE?

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    I'd just suggest the edit 'to get new users to become' as make in this instance has a forcing quality - at least in my dialect of English.
    – Robert Kaucher
    Commented Nov 4, 2013 at 15:46
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    @RobertKaucher Sounds better! I've updated the question. Thank you!
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Commented Nov 4, 2013 at 17:03
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What are your concerns about SharePoint StackExchange that you will be looking into solving once you become a moderator?

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  • Nice question Mike! This is a general, still important question to ask. +1
    – Benny Skogberg Mod
    Commented Nov 2, 2013 at 17:40
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Here's one by Lori G. from the last round of elections:

What kind of time commitment do you plan to make for moderating the site?

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What are some actions you would take to improve SharePoint StackExchange?

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What qualities would make you a good moderator?

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