We're going to have a MOderator election. To discuss how the election should work, go to this other thread. The purpose of this thread is to produce a pretty complete list of candidates, so that when we post a question on MO itself, we can post all the "answers" right away, so it will be minimally disruptive. If there's somebody you think would make a good moderator, post a comment here, perhaps with a short blurb. Please do not use this thread to vote. If you want to support (or anti-support) a nomination, there will be a time for that later. If somebody nominates you, please post a comment accepting or declining the nomination.

Candidates should

• want to be moderators,
• be patient, fair, respectful,
• preferably have >1500 rep,
• preferably be active on meta.

Moderator powers will be granted to an existing account; the new moderator won't start a separate account for moderation purposes. Remember that moderator powers come with significant responsibility. Moderators can close questions, lock/delete posts, and suspend users, but much of the job takes place "behind the scenes." Moderators contact people off-site to resolve difficult situations quietly. In particular, moderators have access to user emails and IP addresses and are expected to keep this kind of non-public information private.

Dear Campaigner,

Thank you very much for your kind comments. However, I am going to decline the nomination; I don't have the time right now to take on further professional responsibility (and I'm also sure that the moderator-to-be will do a much more competent job than I ever could).

Thanks for the nomination Harry! Though I too have some reservations, I accept the nomination.

@Campaigner: Since there are many moderator spots, I doubt the two term limit is of any practical use.

Hi Hailong,

at present there is huge variation in the activity of the moderators. While it's true that Anton and I have done a fair amount of programming, it's not necessarily intended that any new moderator would have an interest in this. Indeed, anyone who has the relevant skills and appropriate ideas can be active in this direction without any need to be a moderator. (Anton is the only person who can directly modify the javascript on the site, anyway.)

As far as I see it, the most desirable thing in a moderator (i.e. what I would like help with!) is an interest in keeping a regular eye on the activity of the site, in particular:

• flags for moderator attention
• highly-downvoted questions
• suspicious voting patterns
• posts by new users

(All of these are provided for in the moderator interface: 10k users can see some but not all.)

I also skim the RSS feed of all questions (I think I can claim to have "seen" every single question on the site) and click through to anything that looks problematic. Usually, these days, anything I click through to has already been discussed, commented on, or closed, as appropriate, but sometimes there's still something to do.

The really important power moderators have is to see the IP address and email addresses of (most) users. We've found it really helpful to email people, especially anytime a serious disagreement breaks out, writing something that both lays out the consensus policy, and tries to mollify and (sometimes) cajole. Sometimes I've been a little scared of doing this --- especially at some times when I know the person might reasonably consider me their "inferior" in the mathematical social order --- but it's nearly always very successful. Just have a moderator step in and offer some middle ground seems to defuse a lot of bad situations. Any time an email to an individual user goes awry in some way, the usual course is to cc all the other moderators, and have someone else try again. This gives you an easy out if your attempt to placify goes wrong.

Moderators can also suspend. In an "emergency", i.e., an active and abusive troll, it's great to have more people to be able to step in and ban people. In such a case, it's fine to act fast and recklessly -- suspensions can be reversed at any time. We've also suspended a variety of other users (maybe 12 suspensions in total so far, probably half of which have been totally clear-cut), generally those repeating asking the same question with slight variations, becoming increasingly hostile and irritated with each asking. Users with email addresses obviously deserve an email explaining the suspension. Users without email addresses simply receive less respect: that's part of the deal.

Moderators can also "close instantly", which sometimes is appropriate and saves time, but it's also dangerous (witness a few community vetoes on my closures! :-).

As Anton pointed out, it's very important that moderators keep email and IP address information private. (For example, if you email two users at once, make sure to use BCC!)

Hopefully Anton and Ben will also give answers to Hailong's question.

@Campaigner, yes, you're right, and that way is for Anton to remove moderation powers from a hypothetical abusive moderator. This is not a situation where elections are the appropriate mechanism for providing accountability.

Harry just beat me to nominating Mike Shulman. I also want to nominate Joel David Hamkins. He has not been active on meta, but that is because he is gifted with an enormous patience.

EDIT: Joel has just informed me that he unfortunately has to decline the nomination.

I nominate Kevin Buzzard and Georges Elencwajg.

Moderator powers will be granted to an existing account

Urgh. This means that one's votes to close, say, become final?

@Akhil: I accept, if only because we young'uns are the only people on MO without actual professional responsibilities! As for time zones, I'll be in England for the next year.

@Kevin: You will probably have to direct Georges to this thread - as far as I know, he is not active on meta.

François G. Dorais 1 day ago edited

EDIT: Joel has just informed me that he unfortunately has to decline the nomination.

Steve, I see that you missed this for your list, so I've reposted it.

Also, could you reorganize your list and put everyone who has declined at the bottom?

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the delay in responding - I am currently at a conference and internet access has not been as easy (or free) as usual.

While I'm flattered to have been nominated as a moderator, I too must make excuses and respectfully decline the nomination: this is partly due to an expected increase in my workload (teaching and research) as of this August, but also because I'm not sure I have the patience or experience-of-other moderation that such a role would ideally require.

Looking back, I think I enjoy the role of "not too uninformed commenter" too much, and the "conflict resolution" side of moderation does not appeal that much to me at the moment.

That said, like Pete Clark upthread, I appreciate the nomination (thanks, Harry), and if I were asked again in the future then I would give it serious consideration.

Reid Barton, I nominate you!

Nominated:

Eric Peterson (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Reid Barton (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Will Jagy (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Mariano Suárez-Alvarez (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Bill Johnson (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Denis-Charles Cisinski (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Urs Schreiber (nominated by Harry Gindi)
James Borger (nominated by Harry Gindi)
Gerald Edgar (nominated by Steve Huntsman)
*Gil Kalai (nominated by Steve Huntsman)
*Tom Leinster (nominated by Steve Huntsman)
*Georges Elencwajg (nominated by Kevin Lin)
*Jose Figueroa-O'Farrill (nominated by Grétar Amazeen)
*Sergei Ivanov (nominated by Campaigner)
Greg Kuperberg (nominated by Campaigner)
Deane Yang (nominated by Ilya Grigoriev)

Active Candidates for Nomination (Note: These people are just people who have been recently active, have more than 10 posts on meta, and over 1500 reputation. This list is not exclusive, but they satisfy Anton's last three suggestions):

Harrison Brown
Zev Chonoles
fedja
Michael Lugo
Akhil Mathew
Mark Meckes
Jonas Meyer
Sam Nead
Charles Siegel
Douglas Zare

Accepted:

Harry Gindi Ryan Budney
*Scott Carnahan
François G Dorais
*Harald Hanche-Olsen
Kevin Lin
*Qiaochu Yuan

Declined:

*Kevin Buzzard
Yemon Choi
Pete L Clark
Hailong Dao
Emerton
*Andrea Ferretti
Joel David Hamkins
Noah Snyder
David Speyer
*Andrew Stacey
Andy Putman
Mike Shulman
Charles Rezk
Steve Huntsman
James Borger

Also, if you can get in contact with people to let them know that they've been nominated, this will allow us to reduce the list more quickly, since I suspect a number of the nominated people will decline the nomination.

Anton--When will the proverbial floor be closed for nominations? If we're electing one or two mods it seems like we ought to be pretty well covered by now.

I was thinking of leaving this thread open for at least a few more days so that people have a chance to accept/decline nominations. It also gives people a chance to chime in on how we should run the election.

If after a few more days this thread is cooling off as expected and there are no big issues raised on the other thread, we'll post this as a CW "question" on MO with the candidates as "answers" and I'll put a system message on the site encouraging people to vote. After some fixed period of time (one week sounds right), the election will end.

@Anton: could you speak explicitly to the role/possibility of downvotes in the election process?

I don't expect them to play very much of a role, but they certainly are possible. I don't have a problem with somebody expressing the opinion the somebody shouldn't be a moderator. But I suppose the concern is that the more game-theoretically inclined sector of our population will try to maximize their impact by upvoting the candidate(s) they want to win and downvoting everybody else. I do have access to the numbers of up and down votes. I'll check to see if the results look any different with downvotes removed. If they do, or if there are any other anomalies that make a difference, the other moderators and I will decide what to do about it. I apologize in advance for the lack of transparency if that happens. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that none of us has anything to gain from an unfair election.