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In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. Due to the submission count, we have selected all provided questions as well as our back up questions for a total of 8 questions.

As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes. Oh, and please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written.

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.

Good luck to all of the candidates!


  1. 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?

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

  3. If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

  4. What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

  5. The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

  6. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

  7. 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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

  8. 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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casey's answers:

  1. 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?

This is an unfortunate situation, but one that has to be dealt with. I'd start with comment cleanup and a reminder to be nice. If the user is active in chat or willing to respond to a superping, I'll try to have a friendly chat with them. If the above has no effect, the next step would be a moderator message. This would hopefully get the message across that their behavior is unacceptable. The next escalation would be short term suspensions, increasing in length until it is effectively a ban.

As valuable as their content is, that is no justification for abusive or harassment behavior.


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

I would talk with them in chat to understand their thought process and if I disagree I will discuss with them to find agreement. If the nature of the disagreement is something that is better served by community consensus, then I'd advocate for asking about it on meta.


  1. If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

The unilateral actions I'll take are on blatant spam (delete) and posts clearly posted on the wrong stack (either close or migrate as appropriate). I will also use it to create obvious tag synonyms that would benefit the site organization.

Any other issues I'll let the community self-moderate. (Though I'll point out apparent inconsistencies on meta to address them or establish a new consensus on the issue at large).


  1. What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

I am a CFI/MEI/MEII and hold an ATP airplane multi-engine land with a type rating in the EMB-145. I have a bit over 3000 hrs TT with 570 turbine PIC. I flew 4 years for a part 121 scheduled carrier serving 253 destinations in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and the Bahamas. I have a little time in helicopter and glider. I am not current to carry passengers or to fly IFR.


  1. The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

While I don't agree that the climate here is hostile I do know that it can seem that way to new users or those who may not be familiar with the SE network. Users, particularly those used to discussion forums may find that their questions do get closed quite quickly if they are broad, open ended discussion oriented posts. If this is the case I find it is best to educate the user about SE and the kind of questions we want here. The user may also be unaware that every user here is a moderator, not just those with diamonds.


  1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Just like you might have heard the phrase "flying is hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror", likewise "diamond moderating is hours of idling in chat punctuated by periodic trips to closet for a mop". Diamond mods are here to clean up the messes and in a perfect word they do absolutely nothing. In reality there is spam, abusive users and comments that need deleting and the occasional post that needs migrating. Diamond mods take care of that stuff.


  1. 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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

I know that some users will elevate anything said that is accompanied by a diamond icon and that anything I have said in the past will suddenly carry more weight in the eyes of some. I am completely fine with that. I've conducted myself in a manner that is compatible with being a diamond mod and am comfortable with a diamond being next to my name for any post of future post I make.


  1. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Comment cleanup, swiftly dealing with spam and abuse and the ability to address problem users (rare around here and I hope it stays that way!). The rest of moderation actions can, and should, be dealt with by the community and having the diamond won't add a lot to it as I will avoid most unilateral actions I could perform (as detailed in an answer above).

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm glad somebody wants to go through and clean up the tags. There's plenty of dupes in there. Many synonyms are called for $\endgroup$
    – TomMcW
    Mar 23, 2016 at 17:14
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voretaq7's answers:

WARNING: Long Post.

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?

This is fortunately not something we've had to deal with on this site yet, but it's something that came up on Server Fault pretty frequently as sysadmins are known to be a rather cantankerous bunch.

Most of the time these issues can be solved by a simple moderator message (or if the problem user is a regular in the site chatroom a little gentle public shaming / peer pressure) reminding them to be nice. Some judicious editing of comment content or outright deletion of comments may also be needed.

In cases where a Be Nice reminder doesn't do the job temporary suspensions may be necessary to allow the user in question to "cool off", and in the rare case where even that doesn't work I have been known to employ longer-period suspensions in the interest of sitewide harmony - that's generally something that I would try to get consensus on from the rest of the moderators though as it's a last resort when everything else has failed to reign in uncivil behavior.

For the worst problem users the longer suspensions may devolve into being effectively a ban: The user is suspended for some extended period, the suspension expires, the user commits the same infraction and is suspended again, etc…
This is a situation I hope we won't actually have to deal with, but human nature being what it is I suspect the issue will arise at some point as the site grows.


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

If there's nothing obviously "bad" or "wrong" about the question my first course of action would be to ask about it in the site moderator chat room in case there's something non-obvious going on, or to see if we can agree on an interpretation and action: Either leaving it closed or editing and reopening.

If it's a hotly contested question or one where the moderators are internally divided I would fall back to the recourse for appealing moderator actions: Opening a discussion here on Meta to get a sense of the community's feelings on the question & the action taken.

Meta discussions are also applicable if all the moderators agree but the community thinks we screwed up: Moderators are an extension of the community's will, and nearly everything we do can be overridden by community votes. Meta serves as a place for the community to discuss decisions (by the moderators or by community votes) and decide if the right call was made.


If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

One of the things I realized when I became a moderator on Server Fault was that unilateral power to act tends to make me less proactive in closing questions: Being one vote out of five in a community-driven process to close or delete something means that my vote to close a question starts a discussion: "Do we want to close this?"
The unilateral close/delete power of being a moderator means that my vote ends the discussion: The action has been taken, and now needs to be overturned.
Because of that I only close the most obvious duplicates or blatantly off-topic/unintelligible questions with the Mod Hammer. I generally prefer to let things sit until a community consensus develops before taking any action (and ideally once such a consensus has developed I won't need to take action, because the community will do it for me).

Particularly on a smaller site like this I'm mindful of the fact that overuse of the Mod Hammer can lead to an authoritarian moderation style where cries of "The mean moderators close all the questions!" actually have some validity. Allowing the community to self-moderate avoids that issue and gives the actions a legitimacy when contested ("5 people felt there was something wrong" versus "One moderator felt there was something wrong"), and also prevents my views as a moderator from being over-weighted in deciding community policy.


What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

I fly entirely for fun: I am a private pilot with around 250 hours of experience, I am half-assed working on my instrument rating (and really need to get serious about it), and I will probably pursue my commercial and CFI, time and cash flow permitting.

I also own an airplane that is older than I am, and take a fairly involved role in its maintenance: I am logging hours toward being eligible to take the FAA A&P exam, though at the rate that's going I will likely have the required hours some time after I'm dead.


The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

I'm not sure how to answer this one. I was really hoping for more specific examples so we could discuss the rationale for closing questions in general.

I don't believe the Aviation.SE community is particularly "hostile" - many times members of the community go out of their way to offer comments on how to fix questions or reframe them in a way that's likely to get better answers.
If this is done in a way that's not consistent with our Be Nice policy it should be brought up (either as a meta discussion or a moderator flag), and folks who are being genuinely rude or inhospitable will probably get a stern talking-to in the form of a moderator message, but simply being told "Your question isn't a great fit for this site, can you clarify what you're asking or try one of these other sites?" is not hostility or rudeness.

There will always be some amount of hurt feelings and people who take question closure as a personal affront to their self-worth. There isn't much I can do there but assure them that this is not the case, and we don't think anyone is a bad human being for asking a question that's not quite within our scope or one that has to be placed on-hold and clarified before we can re-open it and provide good answers.


In your opinion, what do moderators do?

We sit around all day playing poker, drinking whisky, and wondering how come we never get pie on Pi Day. I thought everyone knew that?

Seriously though, moderators do as little as possible: we are the janitors of the site, mopping up unsightly messes so that when visitors come by to read questions and answers they aren't assaulted by spam and the like.
On Aviation this often involves the use of the Destroy User button to eliminate blatant spambot accounts, comment cleanups, and attending to the occasional moderator flag.


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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

This is a somewhat unfair question for the Moderators Pro Tempore to answer as we've had a diamond attached to everything we say for most of the site's life: For us the difference would be speaking without the diamond, which could conceivably give us more freedom to voice our opinions without them having the weight of a moderator's pronouncements.

I could tell you that having the diamond attached to everything I say or do doesn't change anything, but I think it's obvious from my earlier statements that it does: Actions taken as a moderator are as much a reflection of the community as they are of myself, and that requires a certain amount of temperance (particularly for someone like me who has rather strong feelings about site governance).

In particular there are times where I will specifically separate my views on an issue as a moderator from my views as an individual or user (Moderator Hat On/Off), but even when I'm not wearing my "Moderator Hat" I am cognizant of the fact that having a diamond lends some extra weight to my opinions (whether that's a positive or negative weight largely depends on the context).
I view this as a natural extension of the community's trust: If I am elected to a moderator position it means some portion of the community agrees with my style of moderation and the site vision I've espoused here on Meta, and presumably expects me to continue holding to that vision.


In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Particularly with the new 20K tools (site analytics) almost everything a moderator can do is available to high-reputation users on the site. The major moderator functions I use today are the ability to edit/delete comments, perform unilateral tag merges, and use the Destroy User button on blatant spam accounts which have no meaningful participation on the site.

Because our site is still relatively small being able to take these actions unilaterally allows me to take care of problems more quickly than waiting for a 5-user consensus or flagging spammers, but for most practical purposes I'm no more or less "effective" for having a diamond.
That is in fact a Good Thing, since it's the way the system is supposed to work: The community self-moderates, and the moderators only step in to take action when it's absolutely necessary.

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Farhan's answers

  1. 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 user generating valuable answers in indeed an important part of our community. There might be a chance that the arguments are because of some misunderstanding. My first goal will be to find the cause of the continuous flags and then analyse the situation.

If that doesn't rectify the situation, then a dialogue needs to be arranged between the relevant parties, in the presence of one or more mods. Based on my experience, this solves the problem most of the time.

The last option is to discipline the person causing the issue. I doubt that it has ever happened in our community.

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

I consider that all mods are part of a single team and such scenarios are very unlikely. In case it happens, the mods can go to the private chat room where I would discuss the matter with the other mod. A consensus can easily be reached or in the worst case, majority wins.

  1. If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

There are issues which fall under spam, offensive or completely unrelated. There is no question about these ones to be smashed with the mod hammer as our community already agrees on the conclusion.

Regarding the other types which require some discussion, I will let the discussion to occur. If there is a general level consensus in the direction where most people are tending towards, then mod action is not necessarily against the community's decision. If that is not the case, then a dialogue needs to happen to reach a conclusion.

  1. What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

I am a student pilot towards my private pilot license. Mostly I have flown Cessna 152s and 172s. In simulator, I have XPlane with Saitek controllers. I also have a few hours in Boeing 777-200ER Simulator (uFly Toronto). Besides flying related experience, I am an avid reader of flight-related magazines and books, studied many air disasters (TV shows, documentaries, NTSB investigations and other sources), member and subscriber of AOPA and Smithsonian Air.

  1. The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

Fortunately, I can admit that this allegation is not completely true. I do feel that some other SE communities have become too aggressive but we at Aviation.SE appear to be a large group of friends talking to each other in different parts of the world. This is true for today, but I do not foresee that the direction we are headed is of any concern regarding hostility.

There are some users who are too eager to jump to conclusions but there are many scenarios where the community reversed its initial decision of an impromptu extreme conclusion.

  1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Against the general perception that moderators are like bosses, I would say that moderators are facilitator. They make sure that the site maintains a nice environment which encourages both experts and novice users who are new, do not know what to ask and how to ask.

  1. 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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

If elected a mod, I can facilitate users more. That is the biggest, rather only benefit I am focusing on. There are many people smarter and more knowledgeable than me in our community, and I will continue to learn from them. I would not imply that being a moderator should change my perception.

  1. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

There are some avenues which will open to me to help the community. At present, I have all or most of the moderation badges. If I am given the opportunity to help the community as a mod, I can deal swiftly with issues which previously required mod's attention.

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Federico's answers:

So, it has come to this.

  1. 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?

I agree with Jay Carr on this one: at first I would speak with the user privately, to see if there is room for discussion and mutual understanding.

If the user should not collaborate during or after this process, I would speak to the other mods to find a shared strategy for that particular situation.

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

I would probably ask in private for explanations, it is equally likely that I either missed something or that they missed something, leading to a situation where both agree.

Should there be instead a fundamental disagreement, there is still a third mod that can weigh in and be the voice of reason.

Should we mods fail, the high rep users can still override the decision.

  1. If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

Cases of obvious spam and other extreme ones (that I have almost never observed here, luckily) such as offensive language and similar.

I don't think I would easily close unclear and/or off-topic questions, we had cases recently (yesterday/today) where the community debated whether a certain question was on topic or not (and now I think that in the beginning I was on the wrong side of it). For this reason I would abstain myself as long as possible.

  1. What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

In the cockpit, 1 glider flight, a bunch of jumpseat flight on the A320 family and the MD-80, none as pilot.

Out of the cockpit, at 4 I was running around Starfighters on the flight line. Later I would chase my brothers around Tornados. Currently I have a slightly more professional relationship, being an aerospace engineer; I am doing a PhD in flight planning and flight control (autopilots, not the ATC kind).

  1. The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

For what I have seen, there has not been any special (negative or positive that might have been) treatment reserved to newcomers, everyone has been treated like all other members of the community.

I understand that being this a Q&A site it might be difficult to adjust if our previous experiences are mostly discussion forums, but speaking about it (like in this case) is beneficial to everyone: to the newcomer, that will better understand how things work around here, and to the "old guard", that time by time will get reminded that not all know how everything works and that sometimes leaving a comment below a poorly written post goes a long way.

  1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Ehum, moderate? I appreciate those who marry the idea that moderators should only be janitors, but in my experience in a large community some kind of conflict is bound to happen (see point above, for example): in some of these cases the moderator has then to intervene to allow the parties involved to resolve their conflict. If the parties can solve it by themselves, no intervention is required, obviously.

  1. 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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

Scary, in a sense? In other communities that I have moderated, there was no easy way to distinguish a mod from a user, except from the mod list published somewhere. In most of the day-to-day life mods were just users like everyone else, with no special badge or marker attached.

I have no doubts that this difference will affect me somehow, I will probably be more cautious, than I would otherwise be, when writing a comment and similar, checking multiple additional times that my language will not come across as judgmental/paternalistic/other unintended readings.

  1. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Now we are still with beta rep levels, meaning that the difference is very limited for me. As question 7 underlines, I will be "The Voice of Authority (TM)", giving all I will write that extra weight that might be decisive (for better or for worse).

Additionally, the ability to create private chats could help greatly in dealing with borderline situations.

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SentryRaven's answers:

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?

I would invite them to discuss it in a chat. Talking about something and trying to find a consensus is always the preferred method and leads to good results. Should this approach have no effect whatsoever, the next step is to discuss the matter with other mods and see if there is a course of action that is required.

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

Again, talk about it. Find out why the other mod feels the question should have been closed and deleted. If no agreement can be reached, take it to META. The key users and heavy users that also frequent META will be able to weigh in on the matter and the mods will have new guidelines and criteria to work with. SE is community driven, so let the community decide.

If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

I have waited to quote Spiderman for a while here: With great power comes great responsibility.

Now that this is out of my system: Unilateral closure or deletion of questions or answers is warranted, where the question or answer is inappropriate, be it either insulting others, spreading malware/adware. The Aviation.SE community is a really active group and we have many people that can vote on question closure and flag answers. The community already does a good job of self-moderating the site for content and on-topic questions/answers, so that is nothing a moderator should try to do unilaterally.

What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

I have a PPL-A for both TMGs and SEPs, no IR unfortunately. I started to fly in 2012 and accumulated some 100h+, beforehand I was already a member of VATSIM, an online simulation network, where I also fly (1100h+) and provide ATC services (1100h+) up to Enroute Control. In my aviation club, I am responsible for teaching people radio phraseology and I also coordinate the AFIS scheduling for our airfield.

The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

This question is subjective and I respect if people perceive it like this. So here are my two cents:

People who either work in aviation or fly, need to be emotionless, when it comes to discussing issues or mistakes. My personal opinion here is that this also applies to SE. If a question or answer is shut down/closed by voter consensus, this is nothing personal. It's members of the community who believe the question is not suited. And they can be wrong about that. What is important when this is the case: The discussion on META about a question needs to remain neutral and without emotions, it needs to be logical and users need to reflect what is being exchanged on META. This neutrality should not be mistaken as hostility. In my opinion, it's an aviation mentality applied to this very special aviation community here on SE.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

My biggest hope is: not much! From what I have seen throughout my two years here on Aviation.SE, the moderators are quick and swift to remove what I have mentioned above: malicious content. Apart from that, my image is that of a shepherd. Let the herd do what they want to do and just make sure they are safe. And I don't mean that users on here are brainless sheep. :)

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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

I am as human as anybody else here on Aviation.SE, with the exception of Otto maybe. This will inevitably lead to the situation that I will make mistakes even as a moderator, when elected. I cannot promise to make any, but I can promise to listen out when the community provides feedback as says: "SR, that wasn't a smart move..."

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

That one is easy: It will not! I am already a contributing user to this SE and will continue to be one, irrespective of any little diamonds next to my name.

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  • $\begingroup$ Based on your answer to the last question, why do you want to be elected if you don't think the moderator role would help you be more effective? $\endgroup$
    – fooot
    Mar 22, 2016 at 16:46
  • $\begingroup$ @fooot Because I do not believe it will make anybody more effective than they are now. Like I tried to outline, it's a janitor position and the tools available, if used correctly, are to tidy up the place where required. The community does a great job at everything else. I added myself as a candidate to give more options to users to chose from. I am not any better or worse than any other candidate here and will do an equally good job, give or take. $\endgroup$ Mar 22, 2016 at 17:14
  • $\begingroup$ So if the tools don't make moderators more effective, what is the point? $\endgroup$
    – fooot
    Mar 22, 2016 at 17:20
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    $\begingroup$ @fooot In my opinion, only speed. Although it's not guaranteed that a moderator is available, they are faster to remove unwanted content. The the answer by voretaq to the question, we are basically on the same page about this. $\endgroup$ Mar 22, 2016 at 17:25
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    $\begingroup$ Ok, that makes sense, thanks for explaining. I think your answers are good, especially the bit about setting aside emotions when dealing with issues. $\endgroup$
    – fooot
    Mar 22, 2016 at 17:28
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JayCarr's answers:

  1. 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?

My first impulse would be to invite them to a private chat and work with them to see if perhaps they are generating the large number of arguments/flags unintentionally (I actually have done this before, even without being a moderator.)

If that doesn't work, I'd probably start discussing it with some of our heavier users in the chat room to see what their general feel is. Perhaps it's something that concerns me, but really nobody else, right? If that's true, I'd leave them alone.

If there was a consensus that something really had to be done then I would send out a simple warning "cut x out, or we're going to have to suspend you". And if they don't listen to the warning, they get suspended.

But, frankly, hopefully it never ever comes to that because I really feel if that hammer has to be brought down I've failed in some way as a moderator. I much prefer dialog...but I'm not afraid to use the hammer if I have to.

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

Again, discussion. But I think my general aim would be to put that decision back in the public domain by encouraging someone to flag the question for re-opening. I think this community polices themselves well, so I would really prefer the community decided.

Some might say, "what if the post was just offensive or vulgar?" Well, in that case there wouldn't be any disagreement between me and the other mod who shut it down. So...not so much an issue.

  1. If elected as a moderator you will receive a Diamond of Technically Some Manner of Limited Power: Many of the actions you used to vote on (requiring 4 others to agree with you) can now be taken unilaterally. Under what circumstances would you unilaterally close or delete a question? Under what circumstances would you wait for community consensus before taking action?

I would only unilaterally close questions that are clearly spam or have clearly crossed a line in terms of good net denizenship (trolling, swearing, *ism (take your pick), etc etc.) But overall my goal would be to contact the questioner and see if we can figure out a way to get the question open again, but with a better attitude.

As for "is this on topic?", I don't feel I should use unilateral power to close a question as being off topic or to vague or what have you. We have a wonderful review process for that and I would encourage people to use it. Personally, I would abstain from that process other than to simply giving an opinion in comments.

  1. What is your background in aviation, both in and out of the cockpit? As a pilot, if you are one, what aircraft have you flown, what ratings do you hold, and how many hours, and years, of experience do you have? Do you fly currently? Do you have GA, corporate, Part 135 or Part 121 experience? Military experience? Single seat? Crew aircraft? Flight instruction? Other experience (gliders, seaplanes, rotary wing, etc)? Outside of flying the aircraft itself, what other experience do you have in aviation, such as work in aircraft design or production, dispatching, airport operations, and so on?

I am, sadly, berift of a pilots license. But I've loved planes since I first set my eyes on a WWII War Birds book when I was a fifth grader. I've always wanted to fly, and, universe willing, I will get a license before too long.

In the mean time I've logged thousands of hours in home simulators, and hundreds of hours on this site. Not to mention having read countless books and wikipedia articles. Mostly around the X programs, if I'm honest (Chuck Yeager being an early hero of mine. Gotta love 'Glamorous Glennis', right?) I could....go on for a long time, but I think I'll stop there. Let me just say, yeah, not a real pilot (only taken a couple introductory flights), but super enthusiastic about the topic.

  1. The current climate that I have experienced in this community is one of hostility. I am concerned about where stack exchange is moving in general. The moderators, I feel, are very quick in shutting down questions. My two cents.

Again, I don't feel moderators should be shutting down any questions unless they are profane in some regard. That's the communities decision.

Further, even if they are profane, I feel a moderator should take the time to work with the questioner (if at all possible), to see if perhaps the question can be amended to be better for the site and then reopened. I've done this in the past, and would continue to do so as a mod.

  1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

In a perfect world, nothing. But this world isn't perfect and we occasionally get attacked by spam, vulgar posts or arguments masquerading as comments. My goal would be to help clean these up and keep denizens informed on how to properly, and politely, use our site.

  1. 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? Compared to the earlier question - this question is about perception rather than tool usage itself.

It mostly feels like an extension of what I'm currently doing. I don't plan on changing who I am in the least. I already enjoy being helpful and trying to build up this site. I'd continue to do that with the diamond, I would simply have more tools at my finger tips. In essence, I've always tried to be the best representation of this site I can possibly be, so I don't think I would feel much of a shift in terms of my perception of what I do.

  1. In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Mostly it would allow me to delete spam and regulate comments (which sometimes can get a bit chatty, sometimes warranting a reminder that people should use our chat for that sort of thing.)

In another sense it might make people pay a little more attention when I ask them to be nice. Though, to be perfectly fair to this community, I feel I've always been well received when asking people to be polite so.... Not sure it would make all that big of a difference.

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