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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.

English Language Learners Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2025-05-06. 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 2025-05-06 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.

  • 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 currently.

  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

    • 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?

  • The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

    • 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 enough reputation to access moderator tools or become a trusted user?

  • 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. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

    • We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
    • 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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    If you would like to see what has been asked before for inspiration, here's a search that lists our past question collection posts: ell.meta.stackexchange.com/… Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 15:49
  • 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? = Does not work. Why? Because it is not the user's fault his/her valuable answer generated a large number of arguments/flags. So, it's the commenters who need dealing with not the person answering the question. Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 19:04
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    @Lambie The question usually refers to the contributor's behaviour, they can post great answers but if they argue with users about everything, openly deride answers by different contributors, lament that they feel shackled, or question any decision they personally disagree with, then the issue is with them not the commenters. Commented May 1, 2025 at 13:29
  • @Lambie can you please post your question for potential moderators as an answer rather than a comment? It makes it easier to include in the questionnaire we will give candidates. Commented May 1, 2025 at 13:46
  • @Mari-LouA Yes, that is a problem but that is not how the question is structured, is it? Commented May 1, 2025 at 14:20
  • Is it ok, Sasha, that I posted my idea as two questions instead of one? Commented May 1, 2025 at 17:25
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    @Lambie it's alright. the two questions are closely tied so it makes sense to put them in one, but its up to you. if you prefer to split it into two, separate questions thats ok too. Commented May 2, 2025 at 15:01

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This is a site dedicated to helping others learn, and language learners often feel some emotional vulnerability, especially when learning a language that holds some international "prestige". At the same time, the Stack Exchange Q&A format is based around community moderation with downvotes, close votes, and constructive criticism in comments. Do you think we're striking a good balance on this site? Why or why not?

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We get a lot of questions that attract criticism, downvotes, and close votes, for reasons that sound like "they're too simple". (See "Please, everyone ... details. Please!" and "Policy for questions that are entirely answerable with a dictionary".) As a moderator, you will have more actions and tools available to you, and any public actions you take, including comments, will have a visible diamond associated with them. How do you expect to handle these questions, and resulting discussion, differently from as a regular user?

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  • I was hoping to ask this in a neutral way that isn't pushing one answer over another: I'd be happy to see any well-reasoned answer. But often when I think I'm asking a neutral question, no one else hears it that way—can I improve this to sound more neutral? Commented May 5, 2025 at 18:10
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AI generated content

You have received several flags from users who suspect that an answer (or more than one) by a contributor was generated by AI.

To complicate matters even more, Stack Exchange has prohibited moderators from using AI detection tools to determine whether content is human-generated or not. College professors have also argued that GPT detectors are unreliable.

Meanwhile, ELL users suspected of copying AI content, continue to produce good content and earn reputation.
What do you do?

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  • Can this be significantly shortened? Don't make a candidate have to choose between quoting your question in full and having enough space to actually answer it. Signed, someone who ran out of room last time and had to do some ruthless trimming :( Commented May 5, 2025 at 22:28
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    @Laurel Done. I want to include the fact that using AI detector tools, to determine whether content is original or not, is forbidden by Stack Exchange. It's important because elected moderators have to sign a contract agreeing with the terms. Candidates need to know this important piece of information. Commented May 6, 2025 at 11:38
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A question of mine that I asked in the 2022 moderator election

Under which circumstances would you, as a moderator, delete an on-topic answer that has attracted one or more upvotes?

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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? = Does not work.

Because we can't tell why the arguments are generated or even flags are generated. It may or may not be because of an OP.

So, I would put it like this:

How would you deal with a large number of arguments/flags in comments when a user's answers are usually valuable.

VERSUS

How would you deal with a user who produces a steady stream of valuable answers but who argues too much with those posting comments?

So, two different questions...

Furthermore, I think we should be careful using the term "behavior" when in fact something else is meant: personal comments, disruptive comments, etc.

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  • I've had second thoughts. Your questions are so closely related, you're right to make it a single post. So I'm deleting my mild objections, excluding this comment. I doubt the staff will reply before Monday but you never know. Commented May 2, 2025 at 11:50
  • @Mari-LouA Well, I'm glad we cleared that up. Commented May 2, 2025 at 13:12
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As suggested for previous elections by @ColleenV:

Sometimes people post comments on ELL that attempt to answer a question, in whole or in part. How would you handle these comments?

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How many other sites do you moderate on?

Why do you want to be a moderator on another site?

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