In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected [from an earlier thread](<LINK TO FIRST THREAD>) 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 - I actually took out one of the presets because one of the submitted questions covered basically the same ground (just on a slightly more severe scale), and then I merged two of the submissions because I can do that. Grand total is still 10 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](http://meta.superuser.com/revisions/6e26487e-255b-400a-9746-be1807c6000f/view-source).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, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post. 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! **Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.** To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission): --- >1. 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? >2. Nobody's perfect. What is one mistake you made and what did you do when you noticed it? >3. 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? >4. 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? >5. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been? >6. What is your philosophy on moderation in Chat? >7. 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?** >8. 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?** >9. There are currently [**110,000** unanswered questions](https://superuser.com/questions?sort=unanswered), 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? >10. 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](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291301/can-a-machine-be-taught-to-flag-spam-automatically), Not an answer or plagiarism. Can you elaborate on how you expect these tools/bots influence your moderation?