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In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Here's how it'll work:

  • During the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, July 25th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

  • This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at current.

  • At the end of the phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.

  • Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, containing 10 questions in total.

  • This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

  • 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?
  • In your opinion, what do moderators do?
  • 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?
  • In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
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Considering that there is a very large amount of traffic by new users, and all, I think this would be a good fit:

A new user is in disagreement with another user (or moderator) that their question has been closed for "seeking legal advice." How would you approach and react to the situation?

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It is possible that the voting at this site (especially for Hot Questions) isn't driven by expert review, but rather, popular opinion.

Do you think this is happening? If so, is it a problem? Would there be any way for moderators to help in the case where a Hot Question attracts a lot of non-expert votes for an incorrect answer?

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This is a variant of one of the starter questions: hopefully the difference is clear.

What should moderators do?

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    I like this. There is indeed a potential discrepancy between "What do I think moderators do?" and "What do I think moderators should do?", and they present useful information on both sides.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jul 19, 2016 at 16:31
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Many questions asked on LSE seem to actually request personally-applicable legal advice ("can I sue X for Y?", "Is this contract condition okay?", "Can I legally Z?", "Is W fair use?"). Are such questions problematic, and how should they be dealt with?

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Specialized expertise helps to ferret out what's important, and thus what might be salvageable, in questions that are up for action.

What legal jurisdiction/tradition are you most comfortable with?

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    I like this question. The only thing I would potentially add, is for moderator candidates to ask how they think it will affect their moderation on the site (and how it has affected them in the past).
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 19, 2016 at 20:43
  • @Zizouz212 concur...
    – Pat W. Mod
    Jul 19, 2016 at 20:45
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There's been a few differing opinions so, and I like to see people who have differing opinions too!

What should be our policy on citing and having sources in answers? What is our current policy?

How should such a policy be enforced on the site?

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There are alternative views on law that suggest that one may essentially opt out of the legal system (sometimes known as a common law defence). How do you believe they should be handled on this site?

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