In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected [from an earlier thread](http://meta.superuser.com/questions/7902/2014-moderator-election-qa-question-collection) have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. Not every question was compiled - as noted, we only selected the top 8 questions as submitted by the community, plus 2 pre-set questions from us. Well, one of the top 8 was taken from our prebaked but that just shows how much y'all really wanted to see that one asked! 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](http://meta.superuser.com/revisions/22834b26-c5b9-4aa4-85c8-6554adf5bb40/view-source). 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! --- > Super User's broad scope overlaps with several other Stack Exchange sites, including but not limited to Ask Different, Ubuntu, Server Fault, Unix & Linux, Software Recs, and others. How do you intend to handle issues of scope overlap? How would you handle a flag suggesting that a question about OS X be migrated to Apple.SE, or a question about bash migrated to U&L? > Stack Exchange has established quite a few norms over the last years, which dictate the default action to be taken in several situations. After a few weeks of moderating, you find yourself in strong disagreement with one of these policies. Would you take different actions and deviate from the norm based on your personal assessment of the situation, or would you follow the established rules in order to keep the moderation coherent? If you thought a policy needed changing, how would you approach that? > Super User is a community of people, and often people disagree (whether on the topicality of the question, correctness of an answer, etc). While many users discuss things civilly, some don't. What is your approach on handling arguments that get out of hand, or are distracting from the original topic? > 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? > Topicality (that is, whether a question is on-topic or off-topic for the site) is broadly described in the Help Center, but there are often questions that test the boundaries of the topicality guidelines, causing some users to disagree on the topicality of a question. Describe in a few sentences your personal view on the topicality rules of Super User, and how you might apply them as a moderator. You may cite other content on the network as a reference for your answer, but answer in your own words. > 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? > How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been? > What will you do to breathe life back into my the Super User Blog? > A user takes major offense at content in another user's profile (e.g. about me text, or avatar) and repeatedly flags posts by that other user within a few hours, demanding that you remove the offending content from the profile. You look at the user profile, and it doesn't appear to be against the rules. Neither user is available in chat. What do you do? > What is your current approach, overall, to handling new users when they come into the site and appear not to understand our rules/customs/guidelines? If you became a diamond moderator, how would that approach change, if at all? For the purposes of this question, you may assume that the new user is not posting something worthy of the "Spam" or "Offensive" flags; that would make the question too easy to answer ;) Instead, just imagine that the new user has posted an answer with quality problems, or asked a question in an "Answer" post, or asked a question that has been asked many times before and is widely duplicated -- something along those lines. Pick an example and explain how you deal with it.