I'm DavidPostill and here are my answers.
- A pretty important part of moderation is engaging the community. How have you engaged the community so far, and what do you intend to do as a moderator to build on that?
That's covered in my nomination and repeated here for convenience:
After some time interacting with the main site I joined Root Access (the Super User Chat room) in order to become more involved with the community and to get to know better some of the more active users and moderators.
Later I was trusted enough to be invited to become a room owner and have subsequently played a part in moderating the room.
Becoming a moderator would not change this.
- Nobody's perfect. What is one mistake you made and what did you do when you noticed it?
I'll give two examples:
Using a dupe hammer to close as question as a duplicate and using it again to reopen when the user explained how it wasn't actually a duplicate.
Casting an incorrect spam flag when seeing a report in the Charcoal HQ chat room. When I was told by other room participants that my flag was incorrect I retracted the flag (this is a new feature - flags can now be retracted if they haven't been actioned).
I'm always happy to be notified if I do make a mistake and I will apologise and try to put it right (if that is possible).
- A user has a long history of posting borderline (and sometimes not-borderline) abusive comments, and they just started up again. They've been given short suspensions a couple times, but it didn't get the point across. They're now due for a year-long suspension, according to the standard progression. They're also a prolific contributor to the site, with vast expertise in $Technology. Do you consider this in how you handle the case? How?
I believe the Be Nice takes precedence over great content. If the particular user chooses to ignore warning and suspensions then it clear they don't want to change their behaviour. Abusive behaviour will drive away new users to the site, and there are always other people who can answer questions.
- How do you feel the current moderator team is doing, and how do you view your style of moderation compared to the current team? What one flaw of the current moderator team set do you think needs addressing?
The current team has always done a great job (thanks guys!). I haven't noticed any major flaws in the current SU team and I haven't had occasion to disagree with any of their public decisions..
However, I have seen "foreign" mods in Root Access occasionally being a bit "heavy handed" in their responses to flags.
Our room culture is fairly relaxed and the mods and rooms owners (myself included) try to maintain a "light hand". This approach mostly works very well.
- How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
I would have a (private) discussion with the mod and see if we could come to an agreement about the appropriate resolution.
If we still can't agree then I would open the discussion to the rest of the mod team and let the majority decide (we have 9 mods so no deadlock is possible).
- What is your philosophy on moderation in Chat?
Make sure Be Nice is observed.
Take into account the room culture (for Root Access that would not be an issue as I've been a room owner for some time and I know the culture). For other rooms I would have to catch up on the culture. Of course, Be Nice must be observed regardless of the room culture.
I like to be "light handed". Moderation should mostly be invisible in a chat room. I'm lucky in that I've had Journeyman Geek to learn from.
- There are subjects that are within the purview of the site but considered a "gray area". Examples might include such things as circumventing user agreements, which some people consider to potentially involve unethical behavior. They are a gray area because they are not officially prohibited, like piracy, but are generally deemed off-topic due only to precedent. Specific issues of this nature are periodically raised on Meta to poll member input on whether they should be on topic. This question is not about your opinion for or against such topics. Here is the question: Should the decision as to acceptability of any and all gray area subjects be a matter of community consensus, or should at least certain cases be based on foundational principles and not subject to community preference? And why?
I'm happy to let the community decide these cases. Once the policy is decided, as a mod I would uphold it, regardless of my personal opinions. After all mods are (usually elected ) representatives of their communities.
- Beyond answering questions and participating in community moderation functions, some members take an active role being supportive to new users. This can include such actions as suggesting helpful resources, explaining site nuances, helping to polish their posts through advice or edits, providing words of encouragement, providing friendly input when comment threads become unfriendly, etc. Any member can be supportive, but for a moderator, is it a fundamental responsibility?
A moderator is a member of the community and has the same responsibilities (as well as a few more). In that respect a mod should be just as supportive and do all of the things mentioned.
- There are currently 110,000 unanswered questions, which is around 1/3 of the total number of questions. Do you consider this to be a problem and do you have any ideas on how to go about organizing this work? E.g. would you organize 'cleanup' events on Meta to encourage users to look at the Unanswered queue?
There will always be unanswered questions:
Some problems may not have an answer.
Many are old questions that would today considered as off-topic by current community consensus.
Many are old questions about technologies that are no longer in common use.
Others may be answerable only when a person with the right knowledge comes across the question.
As an aside there are currently 58,774 questions with no answers, so it is not as bad as it seems at first sight. The 110,000 is questions with no upvoted answers.
All in all I don't feel this is a significant issue.
- Across the network several teams are working on, or have already deployed, automated tools (bots if you like) to assist in flagging posts for SPAM, Not an answer or plagiarism. Can you elaborate on how you expect these tools/bots influence your moderation?
I can regularly be found in Charcoal HQ, a chat room devoted to flagging spam. The spam bot is deleting spam with a higher accuracy than human flaggers and the spam is deleted without mod intervention sometimes only a few seconds after it is posted. So in terms of spam flags the bots are reducing mod workload in spam handling. That leaves more time for other mod activities.
