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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, August 3rd 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 new process, feel free to post as a comment here.

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We allow questions about all sorts of databases, such as:

  • Traditional RDBMSs; both commercial and open-source (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Postgres)
  • Slightly non-traditional databases (e.g. MySQL)
  • NoSQL and NewSQL databases and document stores (e.g. BDB, MongoDB)

As a community, we sometimes come across as looking down on all but the first group; MySQL is treated with mild contempt and NoSQL sometimes with open derision (though it is also widely recognised that both have their place).

Is this a good thing? If not, how would you act as a moderator to encourage a different attitude in the community?

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Quite many newcomers face the situation their question is not fit in for the rules of community:

  1. Details are lacking
  2. No sources are provided
  3. Several other down vote reasons arise

What is your opinion on this phenomenom of welcoming newcomer with seven down votes? Is the situation just part of the game or could you help in some way?

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What's your opinion on taking out trash, washing dishes, doing windows, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping and washing down the blackboards?

That's what moderators do. The gun is just for show, there's no glamour to being a mod. All the fun stuff can be done by someone with a few hundred rep (edit, comment) so at this point you're literally scraping the crud and repeating the same three phrases to people.

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How would you handle a user who routinely deletes their own content because they feel it wasn't valued by the community, even tho it was a very helpful content that absolutely contributed to the greater good of the internet, it just wasn't seen by those who would have upvoted it?

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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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Some of you guys are great answerers and commentators. How do you feel an 'obligation' to moderate would cut into the time you can put into sharing your knowledge?

Are you going to do something different than what you can already do with your rep?

Will you still answer as much?

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