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This community hasn't had any new moderators since the original three were appointed about four years ago (including yours-truly) and has never had an election. A couple of months ago one of the two mods here stepped down leaving only a single mod here. We need to make sure that this site has moderators to meet your needs. Fortunately, this site is pretty quiet and moderator work isn't burdensome.

In general we want to keep a team of at least three moderators on any site. This makes sure that there's coverage in the case of people being on vacation or dealing with life while also giving them people to discuss issues with. We'd like an election to be successful so I'm posting this to try to assess the community members' willingness to step up and nominate themselves, when the actual election's nomination period starts.

As with all beta elections, this would be non-competitive. The election would be for two slots and if only two people nominated, they would be appointed. If more than two nominated, the community here with 150+ reputation would vote as in elections around the network.

Please leave an answer if you'd be willing to run for a moderator position, should we decide to run an election. Like I mentioned, we're looking at scheduling the nomination period to start some time in June or July '20.

NOTE: This is not an official election nomination thread, just a "pulse check" to get a notion of how many people here would be willing to step up, so you don't have to put up your whole election nomination.

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I would also like to run.

I still do not have an exhaustive picture of the tasks of a moderator, although this recent post on Arqade seems to give a good overview. Can anyone with moderator privileges (here or elsewhere, past or present) comment on that list?

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    A&C is a much smaller site than Arqade, so diamond mod duties would be corresponding lower. I'm a mod on both a large site and a beta site, and the volume of flags is massively different. Big sites might get 50 flags in a day, small ones might not even get 1 flag in a week. I expect most of the "mod duties" on a site like A&C will actually be community-leading stuff (monitoring meta, checking review queues, etc.) with just very occasional diamond duties like banning trolls when they show up once in a blue moon.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Jun 23, 2020 at 11:00
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    Agree. And in the very rare cases of serious malicious activity, it’s good to have both a team of mods (hence the planned election) plus the community of moderators across the SE network that’s always happy to support. They are also a valuable resource in getting started as a mod in general.
    – Stephie
    Jun 23, 2020 at 11:32
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There is currently only one true risk to a beta site:

If there's enough moderation for a public beta site to consistently remain free of spam, for flags to be cleared, and for our Code of Conduct to be upheld, your site will remain open. However, if community leaders drop off, flags sit without being addressed, and we can’t find any suitable volunteers to step forward, the site gets closed.
(Source)

Based on this, I would run if otherwise the site is in jeopardy. And because I like Erica ;-)

But I would like to see a lot more users stepping up to the plate. I think this community has the potential to self-moderate and thus stay alive. While I am quite familiar with how being a mod works, I feel there are lots of other users who are more involved in this community and thus would probably be a better fit.

If anyone is interested, but has questions about “that mod business”, I and many others will be happy to answer in chat - any chat. (Hint: a chat user with a blue user name instead of black is a moderator somewhere.)

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    Ditto. I'd be willing to run if it's the only way to save the site. But, although I was very active here at one point (I think I became #6 in the rep leagues) and nominated myself as pro-tem in the original appointments, I haven't been around here much for years, so a moderatorship here would feel more like "network/moderation expert" than "A&C-specific expert".
    – Rand al'Thor
    Jun 12, 2020 at 6:45
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    Are you still considering running?
    – fixer1234 Mod
    Aug 15, 2020 at 20:04
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    @fixer1234 Would you like me to? Right now, there are three candidates for two spots already. So probably not. I have three diamonds already, keeps me busy even without a fourth. My main issue is that I am not super involved in developing the site’s policies and frames. Which I think is important especially for Beta sites. But we can talk further in chat, if you like.
    – Stephie
    Aug 15, 2020 at 20:30
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    I think you'd be a great fit for one of the slots here, but I understand your reservations. :-)
    – fixer1234 Mod
    Aug 15, 2020 at 20:45

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