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

Law is scheduled for an election next week, August 12. In connection with that, 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.

Here's how it'll work:

  • Until the nomination phase, (so, until August 12 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.

  • If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

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

  • At the start of the nomination 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.

  • Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically 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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Law Stack Exchange has long struggled with the allowance or otherwise of questions seeking legal advice on specific matters, where answers can risk breaching laws against the unlicensed practise of law.

Do you believe the current policies and practices on this matter are sufficient? Are these being appropriately executed? What changes would you like to say, and push for, if given moderator authority and tools (including any you have previously or currently raised)?

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  • Hopefully any serious candidate who still thinks this question is worthy of being addressed once again acknowledges the difference between "unlicensed practice of the law" and a gremial interest against the prospect of people's self-sufficiency on legal matters. The answer I link herein debunks the fallacy that asking for (or providing) legal advice on Law SE in and of itself entails "breaching laws". You are aware of that answer: Remember your attempt to refute it via a comment. Aug 6, 2019 at 14:52
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    Your deliberate ignorance of the fact that more than jurisdiction exists, and that legal advice on SE is unlicensed practise in many of them, continues to show. We are not all so arrogant as to think we are above the law merely for knowing more than the average person about it.
    – user4657
    Aug 6, 2019 at 19:39
  • SE is in NY jurisdiction. I provided authorities reflecting that, under NY law, this falls short of "unlicensed practice". As for any other jurisdictions (again, if any) where it does constitute "unlicensed practice", the answerer and no one else would be individually responsible for it. This means that that is not SE's problem; nor should it be yours either. Especially when some of us readily provide to users verifiable sources, users should not have to pay a lawyer just because you insist on a blanket censorship under pretext of the "many" jurisdictions where you allege this is unlawful. Aug 6, 2019 at 20:12
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    @IñakiViggers Respectful, this might not be the case if StackExchange isn't one of the parties of a case, I've made this slip up with a question I answered about YouTube and copyright claims and how someone not on YouTube can sue someone on YouTube in the Jurisdiction they're in. If somebody gets in trouble because of advice given on the site you're right they wouldn't have grounds to sue but their spouse could or someone connected to them that isn't bound by StackExchanges jurisdiction could. For those who are licensed if we get reported for something like this, we have to go before The Bar. Aug 13, 2019 at 21:24
  • And the legal community is extremely based on reputation, having to go before The Bar can ruin real-life opportunities. Aug 13, 2019 at 21:28
  • @StephanS Except in the case of vexatious litigants, nobody gets in trouble because of adequate advice. Trouble might ensue because of inadequate advice (coupled with other conditions), but that is regardless of whether it was given in private or in a public platform. If someone is afraid of being reported to the Bar, his solution is very simple: refrain from posting anything he considers sloppiness or unlicensed practice. Meanwhile, the rest of us should not be censored by that lawyer's fears of the Bar and/or his career worries about people's growing ability to dispense with lawyers. Aug 14, 2019 at 11:17
  • @StephanS "the legal community is extremely based on reputation, having to go before The Bar can ruin real-life opportunities". Not really. Carol Kuhnke was busted with illegal possession of drugs, endorsed a sexual harasser for judicial re-election, and has quite a history of siding with criminals. Based on your assertion, this judge would have been kicked to the curb long time ago. Likewise, there are so many instances of severe misconduct by judges and lawyers that go blatantly unpunished. Aug 14, 2019 at 11:17
  • @IñakiViggers this comment thread isn't going anywhere, it's like you're taking a rule and not accepting it's a rule then building your answer off of that, and the answer wouldn't even pass the laugh test, so anyways post whatever you want my friend. Aug 14, 2019 at 12:12
  • @StephanS If the concern really were the "unlicensed practice", the answer linked above presents case law and authorities addressing it. Thus, it is not a matter of laugh tests, but of being aware of the law and not pretend certain questions on Law SE are taboo. Aug 14, 2019 at 12:44
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    @IñakiViggers asking a legal question about a personal situation in the first person is asking for legal advice. Legal, or Illegal, questions about "legal advice" aren't a taboo, they are off-topic for this site and go against Law.SE rules. Please read more about Law.SE rules Aug 21, 2019 at 6:02
  • @StephanS I am not saying that those questions are taboo. I said that some people here should stop pretending they are. If you or those who VTC think the issue is that a question is drafted in the first person, then editing it to the third person should suffice and is more appropriate than trying to suppress the post altogether. Regardless, with or without edits, the problem ends there because that same LawSE page reads "the answers are not legal advice, and contributors here are not your lawyer", thereby preempting the imaginary "concern" about liability and unlicensed practice. Aug 21, 2019 at 10:09

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