Charles Wesley's response:
A very popular, trivial question is posted (something like: "Why don't Segways have seats?"). It receives a lot of votes and answers and generates a large degree of comments and discussions. It has clearly been linked to from an external source and is bringing in lots of new users, some are leaving clearly useless answers ("I like this question!") and others are leaving brief, subjective answers ("I think it is because it looks nicer that way"). It also has answers from existing site members with good reputations and include citations and well though-out reasoning. It was posted overnight when you weren't available, and you only see this when you first visit the site in the morning. This post gets flagged as being off topic by several users, and you are pretty sure it is off topic for the site (it's not really about User Experience, it's more of a "Hmm, what's the deal with this thing not being how I want it to be" question). How would you deal with this?
These types of questions are sometime viewed as "problem" questions that need to be contained the answers cleaned up. For "trivial" questions that don't go viral, this is the correct approach.
However, when something goes viral and we have a huge influx of new users--many of whom will bounce--I see it as an opportunity to turn casual interest into a focused curiosity that may draw new voices into our community. A moderator has an opportunity to help shape the response in a way that clearly illustrates what kind of answers we value, but in a way that helps to guide the enthusiasm productively.
Additionally, I don't view this SE as an academic institution that is narrowly defined as merely the study of UX in the abstract sense. Ultimately, this UX is valuable because it is useful and gives users value. A viral question is clearly a topic of interest to many users, and if a moderator comes down too harshly and swings a fire axe instead of using a scalpel, the user's experience may be so negative that they are not only turned off to this site, but to the practice of UX in general.
Viral questions are an opportunity for demonstrating our values as a community and a practice and can be an avenue for new membership and students of the craft. We should be careful not to squander that opportunity for the sake of keeping the site pure.
A new user has left several answers to questions, and many of these have been edited by the community to generally tidy them up, improve the grammar and remove any "I hope this helps, yours, {Username}" unnecessary elements. However this user keeps flagging these changes as well as rolling back these edits and leaving comments like "Stop vandalizing my answers". What would you do here?
Reaching out to the individual is the best and first approach. It is important to stress upon them that as a community we are all contributors and while our questions and answers result in individual reputation points, our contributions are communal by nature and we are all empowered and really duty bound to contribute in many ways including making sensible edits for clarity, accuracy, and readability.
If a user is approached in a respectful and consistent way, a reasonable person would acclimate to community norms and have a greater opportunity for success in the future. Truly combative or negative users can be dealt with using moderator tools such as temporary bans, etc.
The UX community have great stats when it comes to answer percentage, compared to other sites with the same age and the same number of users. The number of answers are remarkably equal to these other sites, but there is one figure, which is low compared to other sites: The number of questions. The entire site generates 11 questions a day, which is half or less, compared to other comparable sites. As a moderator, what would you do to increase the number of questions on the User Experience site?
I truly feel that this is one of the most important questions facing this community.
From my point of view, we as a community can do a better job of creating a collaborative and open community that is open to considering questions that are broader in nature.
We have a bad habit of downvoting and closing questions that are not sufficiently pure. This is well intentioned, out of a desire to prevent the community from becoming less valuable (the graphic design SE is often pointed to as an example of a community that has become over-run with tutorial and how to questions that drown out questions about the craft of graphic design itself).
But there is a danger that we become too narrow in our definition of what is acceptable. While some may not find questions about the practice of UX to be on topic, there is a population of the community that does. We are a small enough community that we can be multi-dimensional in our questions and answers.
When we define our community norms in narrow "pure" terms, and when we are very quick to close any question that is even arguably off topic (I'm looking at you, implementation!) it has a chilling affect. Users self-censor and don't even bother to ask a question out of a fear or assumption that it is going to be serial down voted and closed.
To me, this is a problem that exists today. To encourage questions and improve this metric, we should be open to broadening the scope of topics we consider. This will improve the volume of questions, which we can hold to the same quality standards as others with regard to answerable questions that are backed with evidence and outside resources.
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?
A firm line needs to be drawn regarding the back and forth that may result from questions. Valuable answers and input aside, there is not much room for poor collaboration or community behavior. It is up to a moderator to step in early and consistently in these situations to remove off topic comments and prevent a low simmer from escalating into a full on fight.
A moderator cannot appear to be choosing sides, and must hold any party to the same standard regardless of whether one side is "right" or "wrong". For the problem user, a reminder of community standards is in order. For those fighting against the problem user, a reminder that the tools of flagging for moderator attention and chat are proper avenues for escalating these types of issues to moderators to address.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
While I have voiced my opinions above that do differ from current norms, I believe it is important for all of the moderators to work as a team. There are moderator only chat rooms where moderators can collaborate and discuss these types of issues. I would seek to express my take on a situation and come to an understanding about how the situation should be handled in the future. It is a moderator's duty to ensure the community feels that moderators treat the community norms with equal respect and consistency.
Where do you see yourself spending more time, using your mod powers for good, of course, given that you may only have a certain amount of time per day/week to give? The main site? Meta? Chat? Hanging with mods? Do you feel it even matters?
I think different moderators bring different strengths to a team, so I would play to my strengths. I have reviewed many first posts and close votes and feel that one of my strengths is being a consistent eye on the comings and goings of various questions. I would use my moderator responsibilities to try to curate the best possible environment for the community to do what it does best, which is ask and answer good questions.
Meta should be used more as a public square for openly discussing community norms, such that we are constantly evaluating what the community feels so that we can ensure we are on message with what our users define as being of value. Facilitating these conversations by encouraging users to argue for or against close votes, for example, is a way that a moderator can take a user that had a bad experience and empower them to channel their passion and energy in a positive way. A well argued and collaboratively approached meta post could result in community norms reflecting a different outlook that ultimately improves the site and helps to sustain growth.
A user posts a suggestion on Meta to remove a reason to close questions. It has been decided before what is on topic and what is off topic, but this specific suggestion receives six up votes and one down-vote and is now a +5 question. What is your reply to that suggestion?
This is an example of what a challenged community norm would look like in practice. I don't have a magical number of when a norm should change, but in this case, what I would suggest is that the degree to which we enforce a close reason could be dialed back for a period of time (several weeks or months?) and the community can see what this change does in terms of volume, type, or quality of questions and answers.
Reasons for closing questions are by necessity broadly written. The community norms of how tightly or loosely to interpret those close reasons has a dramatic effect on what the community sees. A moderator can help to facilitate that process so that we ensure we are not too firm and not too liberal with close votes.
How would you handle the situation where someone creates a flag and brings to your attention that they suspect someone is serial downvoting them? Moderators cannot see votes but there may be other evidence that the user has observed of someone targetting them, voting or otherwise. What would you do?
It is important to me that nobody feels that this is an unsafe place for them. I would assure the user that if any evidence of a specific person targeting them can be found, the offending party will be addressed in proportion to the offense.
If it is not possible to determine if the user's perceptions are real or imagined, I would encourage the user to focus on the quality of their questions and answers. Truly well researched and presented questions and answers will attract enough votes that the malicious actions of one or two people will be more than drowned out by the support from the rest of the community. Focused energy on making the questions and answers the best you positively can do is a constructive way to "fight back" and will make you a better resource along the way.
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?
I feel it's an important responsibility because it carries weight in the community and it is a tool for making constructive contributions beyond simply asking and answering questions. It is important that any comments or contributions live up to that responsibility.
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
Being a moderator is largely about being self-less. You aren't rewarded with reputation points or badges (necessarily) that are proportional to your contributions. You are rewarded with the quality and nature of the community that you help to curate. I feel I can be much more effective as a member of the community in this role than by simply contributing via questions and answers.
It is an important question as a voter you should ask yourself: are you voting for someone because of what they have done for themselves (through reputation points) or for someone who has done more for others?
There are several candidates who have done much more for others than myself, so I by no means imply that this is a quality that I possess singularly. But as a candidate with less than 10,000 reputation, I feel it is important to address this.
Thank you for your consideration!
