One of the biggest schisms the site has is the divide between the experienced developers who are active on the site and the mass of inexperienced but enthusiastic people wanting to develop games. What is your stance on the issue, and what role, if any, do you see diamond mods as having on making sure the site remains a useful tool for getting answers to game dev questions?
I wish that more of my fellow professional developers would openly contribute to this site, and sites like it. But I think that the reasons they don't have more to do with issues surrounding their own free time and the legal restrictions they are bound by. Any developer who has day-to-day issues concerning the Xbox One SDK won't be able to find help here because of the NDA they've signed (for example). Even developers on PC titles may worry about accidentally revealing things considered trade secrets by their employer.
I think we can do more to increase the appeal of this site for more experienced developers (professional and otherwise), but I'm not convinced there's anything that could be done on our end to encourage more professionals to visit and participate specifically.
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?
I'm not familiar with the functionality afforded to moderators to communicate directly with members. Presuming there is some mechanism by which I can talk directly, in private, to a troublesome user, I would start there. I'd review the flagged actions and ask the user to correct the undesirable behavior. If necessary, I'd interject in the actual comments/discussions to suppress flame-wars (but I don't believe that the first response should be to delete a comment thread without warning or without public record).
However, in the long run I believe there are more users willing to contribute value to the site than want to harm it. A user who was doing too much harm to the site, and was not responsive to civil suggestions to change that behavior, is not something we need to keep around, regardless of how useful their future answers might otherwise be.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
I would raise the issue in the chat or, if possible, privately, and attempt to come to an understanding as to the other moderators reasoning. "Revert wars" (or their equivalent) among moderators are uncalled for.
In your opinion, what do moderators do?
Moderators keep their fingers on the pulse of the community and act in such a way to provide agency to that community. They try to understand where the community wants the site to go and then provide guidance and support towards achieving that goal. When there is debate, they act as objective mediators (or at least respect when their objectivity has been compromised and defer to another moderator's judgement). When there is undesirable behavior, they police the site and work to correct any issues in a fair and reasonable fashion.
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?
I don't believe in obscuring who I am or what I have done on the internet. I've comported myself in a manner that I'm proud of since I joined this community, and happily remain accountable for everything I've posted in the past.
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
I expect having extra visibility in to site activity will help me better understand where to focus my attention. I also hope to be able to use my binding votes and other moderator powers (sparingly) to achieve a swifter resolution to obvious spam, troll, or otherwise unpleasant activity.
Do you want to make this site more friendly to newcomers and beginners? If yes, how do you want to do it when these people are most likely to ask questions, that are discouraged here?
Yes. "Bad" questions (in the sense of questions that aren't welcome here) are almost always an opportunity to teach the asker about what a good question will look like, and thus hopefully grow them into a more productive contributor to the site. I think the majority of the population at close-vote level does an excellent job of explaining to users why they've posted a bad question and guiding them to ask better ones or to seek what answers they need elsewhere, if applicable. I would encourage more of that behavior.
How do you compare against the other candidates?
I think I differ primarily in the issues outlined in my nomination post: I'm one of the few professionals who actively contributes to the site, and I'm one of the highest-rated users here. Regardless, I don't believe the role of a moderator is to reflect his or her personal bias onto the site, but rather to gather an understanding of the community's view as a whole and act as agent for that view.
Being a moderator will definitely take some of your time. Candidates are usually people with reputation gained by answering questions. Are you still going to take the same time to actually answer questions? Or are we losing some of the great answers because you are becoming a mod?
I don't answer as many questions as others on this site, although when I do I try to put as much polish, research and depth into them as I can. But proportionally, the time I spend answering is less than the time I spend reading, processing review queues, exploring meta, and generally surveying the site. I don't feel that taking on a moderation role would negative impact the way in which I answer questions here.
Aren't you afraid that you will burn out solving mundane issues that you could ignore before?
This is a valid concern, and one that I considered before putting my name into the running. However, I ultimately decided that it would not be a problem since I've been moderating forums for years now without feeling that burn out. I expect it to be even less of an issue when there are many other skilled moderators on the team; we will be able to complement each other's occasional lapses in monitoring due to external pressures (like real-life concerns).
I am fully prepared to step down should I ever be unable to fulfill the time commitment required of moderation duties.
