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Are there really only twothree candidates in the moderator elections who have made over 1000 votes? Not good, not good, but kudos to studiohack, DMA57361 and Sathya.

Opinion: voting activity shows that a user looks at the site content thinking about what is good for the site and acting on it. A user who has 10k+ reputation but has cast only 600 votes I expect to be an asset for the site in terms of generating content, but I doubt they have the right approach to be an effective moderator.

Or should I look at things differently?

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  • FYI Sathya is the only candidate to have over 10k reputation, given your comment about 10K+rep/600votes I'm not if you've noticed this.
    – DMA57361
    Jan 26, 2011 at 10:41
  • Heh, I had to check, but to be pedantic: I've also made over 1000 votes as well - 1007 up and 28 down. To be honest, I was expecting it to be less ... :) Haven't double checked anyone else.
    – DMA57361
    Jan 26, 2011 at 10:44
  • @DMA: I had noticed that Sathya was way ahead in terms of reputation, but not by how much. I guess 3k+/600 would have been better numbers, but the numbers are just illustrative. Jan 26, 2011 at 10:48
  • @DMA: Kudos added for you too. Yi Jiang's page says I haven't missed anyone else. Jan 26, 2011 at 10:51
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    Oh, indeed, and as Jeff says - what numbers matter or not is a little subjective anyway. And rep vs votes is potentially unfair - possibly time on site vs votes is better? Particularly since there is a limit on the number of votes a user can cast per day (30, IIRC).
    – DMA57361
    Jan 26, 2011 at 10:52

2 Answers 2

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Even though I am a candidate in the elections, I will step back and give you my unbiased (as far as candidates go) opinion on what I will be looking for in candidates. Ultimately, however who I feel is a good candidate and who you feel may be different. What you (and everyone else) need to do is look at what you love about Super User, what (if anything) you want changed and line those things up with the candidates and vote in that direction.

With that said this is what I feel is important in a candidate:

  1. The number one thing I look at is what do they do with the privileges they already have:

    • Are they editing? If so, how are the quality of their edits? Are they polite in their edits?
    • Are they voting to close? What are they voting to close? (i.e. is every vote to close a "duplicate" or are there others)
      • This is difficult to see but a good resource is seeing the "vote to close" chat room for who is actively adding and commenting there
  2. Meta participation:

    • If a "potential" mod isn't answering and asking questions about the site, then they may not have the understanding of what the inner workings of Super User is. This is why I feel this is the second most important thing.
  3. How much rep have they earned/amount of time they've been a user. As there are some "younger" (been on SU not as long) a metric that will "normalize" the rep per user is to divide by the amount of time they've been with Super User.

  4. Activity:

    • This is where Yi Jiang's page may be the best indicator.
    • Voting is another key indicator but just like rep there needs to be an adjustment, I feel, to how long the user has been on the site
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  • Couldn't have put it better myself.
    – Linker3000
    Jan 26, 2011 at 20:52
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There are a lot of data points to consider when looking at moderator candidates -- have you checked out Yi Jiang's page?

http://se.awio.com/election.html

As to which criteria are the most important, I think that's totally subjective -- but a good starting point is

  • are they active on the site?
  • are they active on meta?

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