#Rubiksmoose — [nomination link][1]

> 1. Being a moderator is a customer service/public relations job for which there is little to no extrinsic motivation. You will invest hours of your free time dealing with the worst the internet has to offer, and we expect you to do it with a patient demeanor and a smile.  
> What is your motivation for candidacy, or in short - why do you want this job?

The simple reason is that I want to help — I love to help. Dealing with the bad stuff and helping this community is honestly its own reward for me.

And someone needs to do the job. For a community to function properly, there has to be someone who takes care of the issues and people that are preventing things from running properly. I think that I am able to do that well, and I am certainly willing to if the community sees fit to give me the chance.

> 2. What is your view on current moderation policy on this site? Is there anything in particular you disagree with? If so, why? How would you reconcile this with needing to work with existing moderators?

Currently, I agree with most of the moderation on this site. However, I think there is always room for improvement and I'd never say that I'm 100% satisfied with the way things are because of that.

The one broad complaint I have is that sometimes I think some moderation comes across as too brusque and stern, mechanical and impersonal. This has a lot of factors including the SE system itself, but I'd like to put a friendlier face on it with my moderation approach, especially as it pertains to new users (more of whom I'd like to see become regular active members of the community). However, this won't affect the cases of misbehavior on the site where sternness and serious action are proper and necessary.

None of these would put any strain between me and the current moderation team. Though in the future if at least one of the moderators and I would disagree about something, we'd work through it just as any community member would: through reasoned discourse, listening and understanding the other person's views, and compromising as necessary for the good of the community.

> 3. As a moderator, how would you respond to learning that a user, or group of users, feels unfairly treated by another moderator? What steps would you take to learn their complaints, validate them, and what would you do with them if you felt they were valid or invalid, respectively?

Obviously there's not going to be any straightforward flowchart for how any possible interaction could go down, but the broad strokes of how I would approach it are as follows:

**Listen and investigate**: The first step I'd take would be the same first step that I'd take with any kind of concern or disagreement: listen. Listen to all the details they have and understand where it is they are coming from and what may be the root cause of the complaint.

**If the complaint seems invalid**, and seems like it would be easily explained in a way that wouldn't be hard for the user to accept, I'd tell them what I was seeing and try to teach them about why what occurred *seemed* like unfair treatment but actually was consistent with how this site always works. If the user still feels like they were treated unfairly, I'd encourage them to go to Meta with the information they have told me and allow the community as a whole to publicly weigh in. 

**If the complaint seems valid**, I'd likely proceed to talk to the moderator in question, find out their side of the story, and if the complaint continues to seem valid, present them with how I see things and what I've found. Hopefully the mod in question will recognize their error and make amends or amends can be made in other ways. If not, and the infraction was serious enough, the rest of the mods and/or the CM team could be brought in.



> 4. How will you, as a moderator, react to community consensus that you disagree with? How will you, as a moderator, handle issues on which the community has failed to reach consensus, particularly when you personally favor one particular side in the debate?

I believe the mod's role is to enforce community guidelines when those exist.

**Before a consensus** is made, I'll do as any normal community member would and try to understand the position of the other answers and offer a better viable alternative in my own answer (or support another who aligns with it) if I can. 

If the community comes to a **consensus I disagree with**, my job as a mod is to learn, understand, and enact that decision unless it conflicts with SE rules and philosophies.

If there's **no clear consensus** from the community, I'll do as each community member already does and use my best judgement for what actions are best.


> 5. In your opinion, how does the role of moderator differ from the role of a 10k or 20k rep user on the site? What changes to the way that you interact on this site do you expect to have to make when filling this new role?

I ascribe to the idea that mods on SE are there to be human debuggers. In other words, they are there to pick up the slack where the system fails. Thus, hard moderator action should be rare and selectively applied because we do a good job of self-moderation most of the time. Mods also do some of the work cleaning up detritus (read: comment  cleanup). Essentially, mods are there to help the community help itself.

Thinking back I've cast lots of close votes, many of which were easy unequivocal things that needed to be closed. but each time I learned more about the site and how to effectively manage it. If a mod had instead gotten there and closed them before me, I wouldn't have been able to reach the level of experience and confidence such as I have now. As a moderator I want to act in such a way to give users this same opportunity and experience, to create and foster experience and expertise in the community as opposed to simply imposing my own.

The fact that moderators can single-handedly vote to open or close something means that I will using those tools more carefully (and likely sparingly) than I am now (just like I adjusted after getting the gold tag dupehammer). I'll also have to learn when to use the other tools, like locking posts, as I go.

I tend to flag things quite a bit as a normal user, that mode would have to shift to dealing with flags instead of creating them. I'd also have to figure out a comfortable threshold for how I deal with flaggable things I notice *before* the community flags them.

Other than that, I expect to keep answering and editing mostly as I do now, but paying extra attention to the fact that the diamond next to my name means that more eyes will be on me and make that much more effort to represent things well.

> 6. In your opinion, how active should moderators be on meta sites? Should moderators take a pro-active approach to meta issues or be guided by the community?

I think moderators are basically normal users (with access to extra information) when it comes to how their opinions should be weighted on Meta discussions. They are still part of the community. I don't think the mods need to purposely hold back in order to hear the community, in general. If it becomes clear that mod opinions on Meta posts are drowning out (or stifling) minority opinions, we should certainly address that, but it doesn't seem to have been an issue in my time here. 

> 7. How important do you think it is for moderators to be aware of and keep in touch with the feelings of the community with respect to moderation issues?  
> If you view it as important, what kinds of ways do you intend to use to try to keep in touch with how the community is feeling?

I think it is very important for mods to keep their ear to the ground to hear what the community thinks and keep an eye out for coming trouble. In this way, you might be able to catch issues before they get bad instead of only hearing about it on Meta when things boil over. Seeing as the mods represent the community's will, it is doubly important to be aware of any shifts in opinion on those matters particularly.

As far as *how* to listen there's no one good answer except maybe "listen to the community where they are":

 - **Chat** is the place I'm most likely to hear the most from community members because I spend a lot of time there and we do a lot of talking. However, only a tiny fraction
   of RPG.se users ever visit chat and even fewer speak there. It can be a good sounding ground if you
   take into consideration the limitations of your audience.
 - **Mainsite** offers a surprising amount of information I think. I'd look for friction points in policies usually breaking out in the form of comment chains (which we eventually have to clean up anyways). I'd especially look for friction points from new users. Finding where people are getting confused or frustrated tells me that something might be able to be improved.
 - **Meta**, obviously, is the centralized location for opinions. A small fraction of mainsite users come here, but more than chat.

> 8. Becoming a new moderator can be daunting, but is also a big opportunity.  
> What are you worried or fearful about in your transition to becoming a moderator, and is there anything you're looking forward to? Is there anything we can do to help support you in those areas should you be elected as a new moderator?

I'm excited about the potential new role and I'm confident that I can do it in a way that will make the community better. However, I know that I will always be learning here and that I will make mistakes. My biggest fear is that I'll act in a way that bothers or upsets the community but nobody tells me. 

Please, if you have any feedback about my behavior or anything else, contact me. I promise I'll be happy you did and use it to improve. (This goes for me as a normal user as well by the way, but it would weigh even more heavily on my mind as a mod.)

> 9. 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?

If a user is breaking site rules and causing chaos, moderator action is needed. This would start with comments or chat messages telling them what the community expectations are and how they are disrupting things. If the bad behavior and flags continue, then the responses will escalate using mod tools that I don't really know much about now (suspensions etc.). It doesn't matter how much good content you provide, all users must adhere to our community standards. The site can handle one fewer expert answerer if it absolutely has to come to that.

Likely, most cases shouldn't come to any hard action. I'd start by talking and understanding and teaching. After that, it depends on what they do with that information.

> 10. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

 - **Talk to them, if possible**: Either by comment or mod chat (if appropriate), I'd ping them to ask them to explain why they closed it. I'd think that listening and understanding will clear up a substantial number of cases because I've often found that different users can have very different, but valid takes on a post. And everyone makes mistakes of course. The key is to listen and learn from their perspective so that you can be better at it next time, even if you think they are in the wrong. If it's simple and either they or I agree that the other was in the right, we'd adjust the course of action together. If we don't agree...
 - **Use best judgement** what happens in the case of a disagreement is going to be extremely case-dependent. This also applies if I would be unable to reach a mod to find out their reasons. Many factors can influence this decision including time pressure to open or close, how sure I am that the decision should be reversed, how the rest of the community feels about the issue, etc. Whenever possible, I'd give the mod the benefit of the doubt that they saw something I didn't and let their decision stand. I think that focusing on being a team is going to be more valuable than any one action's reversal could be. Only in the case of aligning of several factors would I see it as worth it to undo it.


  [1]: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/election/4?tab=nomination#post-148806