How do you become a provisional moderator for this site?
Soon after the site launches into "public beta," the Community Team will appoint provisional moderators from this community until the community is ready to hold its own elections (once it graduates from beta). This is the official nominations thread that SE will use for selection moderators.
What do moderators gain?
Candidates will be contacted and three of them will be selected to act as provisional Moderators until the community holds formal elections after the Beta period. Besides the normal abilities of a Moderator, they will:
- Have access to a special chat room where we will collectively work through the challenges of moderation and community self-policing.
- Organize the process of selecting the site’s attributes (the [help center], site scope, tags, etc.).
- Rally community support and drive the mission of getting publicity for the site.
Essentially, they will have the ear of the Stack Exchange team for anything we can do to help their sites succeed!
Here's what you should have to be a moderator here:
- Have a decent reputation and participate actively on meta
- Be well spoken, polite, professional, and a natural leader.
- Be trusted. You'll have a lot of data that a standard user won't. There'll be IPs, deleted posts, complete histories, and email addresses. You will have to handle them wisely and follow the terms and privacy policy of SE.
- Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.
Bonus points for:
- Moderator or high-reputation on other sites
- Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.
- Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.
To nominate:
Please break it down into one section for each item listed below. You can nominate yourself or another person... don't be afraid to brag. Although humble moderators are better, we would rather not pass up a better candidate because they didn't want to sound audacious. That being said, a fine line still remains between selling yourself and being arrogant.
- Post an answer containing the URLs to the user's/your main and meta profiles on Earth Science SE. You can also add links to other profiles or to an Area51 profile.
- Why you think they/you would be a good candidate.
- If you are nominating yourself, please add a little bit about you, why you would be a good candidate, and if you really have the time and devotion to guide this community, when it's fun, and when it's a real pain. Also, you can add a small note if you want to help our site by [insert something such as fix tag duplicates].
Post each user as a separate answer, and add multiple answers if you wish to nominate multiple users. Do not make duplicates of nominations.
Additionally, if someone nominates you, please edit the answer to indicate your approval (or declination). If you want to, add a paragraph or two about yourself so we can get to know you.
If you downvote a particular nomination, you are encouraged to share why you did so in the comments, though you are not required to do so. Optionally, you may do the same for upvotes. This gives gives a candidate a chance to either fight an accusation that is false, or gives you the chance to point out why they should not be a mod. In the end, the SE team doesn't seem to look at the votes, they only look at the actual nomination. If the candidate gets mad at you, that proves even more that they wouldn't be a good moderator, so feel free to express your views.
For more information, see this blog post.
A small note from a not so small mod:
Being a moderator is tough work. It seems like an easy job, but there is much more than you see from the surface. It's most disappointing IMHO when a user gets mad and leaves the site for good. It feels like, even if you followed "standard operating procedure", that you did something wrong. Don't get me wrong: it's one of the most amazing feelings to watch a community grow and know that if you weren't there [and no one filled your place], it probably wouldn't have been as successful. That + some occasional swag + talking to some devs (pretty cool) + the diamond makes it worth it.
You'll need time and commitment to fulfill this job. You'll be subject to a lot of naughty words. You'll be sad and upset sometimes. This quote pretty much sums it up:
I should ask this to some others as well, but it seems you're focusing on the "fun and games" side of moderation. While certainly helpful and appreciated, you will at some point also have to deal with the downsides of being a moderator. Dealing with upset users for example. You will no doubt upset some at some point. How do you see yourself handling that? Are you up to that task?
I've said this to a couple different users, and one of them pinged me a few weeks after saying that I was right that moderatorship isn't all fun and games, when he didn't even get a diamond; he were working with another moderator on another site. :) He, like me at first [with an actual ♦], after that initial surprise still found it worthwhile helping the site.
Optional Template:
## I'm Nominating: {Username OR "Myself, {UsernameHere}"} ##
**Links:** [Main (1 Rep)](www.example.com), [Meta](www.meta.example.com), [Other Sites Here (100K Rep, Moderator)](www.othersite.example.com)
{Put Flair Here if you want}
*****
I am a good candidate because... I do... I want...
*****
{Optional (remove the "****" above if you aren't doing this): Getting to know you here}
