- How much do you know about the following series: Naruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail, Bleach, Dragon Ball?
Of the franchises listed:
- I've watched nearly the entirety of Naruto and half of Shippuden, but have read the entire manga.
- I've not pleasently experienced One Piece; the only versions I saw were the 4Kids dub way back when.
- I've not watched or read Fairy Tail, but I am keen to look into it.
- I'm very well versed in Bleach. Of the "big three", this was the one I faithfully stuck with to completion.
- My knowledge of Dragon Ball ends at around Z, but I know bits and pieces of the other series.
I would counter, however, that regardless of my knowledge levels of these series, it's still prudent for me to do the research on them anyway and look into what they're all about. I don't personally feel that having an encyclopedic level of knowledge on these series is vital, but knowing what to look for in a high quality question is.
In that vein, there are heuristics I use to determine a good question even if I don't have experience with the series:
Can it realistically occur in the canon? (Example.)
Does the question cite specific episodes or major plot points? (Example.)
Is the question something that can be answered as a fan (myself), or by someone with some insight into the industry? (Example.)
As this is a heuristic it is subject to flaws, but by and large I feel that I have a good eye for good questions.
- What are, in your opinion, the current issues our StackExchange is facing and how do you plan to address them if you were elected as a moderator?
We have a bit of an issue with diversity of questions. As alluded to in an earlier question, we've got a serious focus on the major franchises (Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Fairy Tail, etc.), but not as much focus on the smaller or newer ones. There are two issues at play here: reach and personal watching habits.
The former is well out of our control; we can't dictate (very well, anyway) which series become the next Big Thing in Japan, so we would have to divert our attention to the latter. This means that events like group watching sessions or chat discussions around new series would be beneficial, as it'd get a guy like myself (who's very stuck in his "not interested in cute girls doing cute things series but OMG New Game does programming and I do too! Wow!!"-ways) interested in other series.
That's a lot harder since I personally haven't been to any of those events held by us here - scheduling conflicts, mostly - and I don't know what measure of success they have. But having more of these events more often and geared towards a wider diversity of genres would be beneficial. Who knows; maybe doing that I'll actually watch Yuri on Ice or Free. Maybe.
- One thing I have noticed is that most of our Mod Team do not appear in the main Chat Room, to the point that most can't being be @ pinged. While Chat is optional it does provide a platform to contact Mods and discuss policies/decisions as opposed to using custom flags or posting on Meta and it does make a Mod more approachable. As a Mod would you become more active/participate in Chat? if not how would you open yourself up to being contacted outside of flagging and Meta Posts?
The way my schedule and routine are structured prevent me from going to chat, but I am prepared to make adjustments which would mean I do go into chat. I don't mind being reached for when needed, but I'd like to set up a system that works for me too. Might fiddle with some notifications APIs to make it more convenient.
- We have a number of community events from annual events like Conspiracy Santa to one off events like EU A&M Meet up. Are there any other Events you would like to see occur to help bolster community cohesion, attract more users to the site and/or increase activity and participation on the site? Apart from the idea of events, are there any other ways you would encourage the community to grow and collaborate?
This is a lot tougher as we really look to find where we fit in the vast and broad community of Anime and Manga discussion places. We've got our share of growing pains with what is and isn't acceptable on our site - notably the identification question issue among others - but that may stem from a deeper identity crisis. We're quite happy and content with being what we are, which is a repository of knowledge for Anime and Manga, but to others, that seems to conflate to "forum", and we're simply not that. An emphasis on growth would require clear and readily visible expectations to others as to what we're looking for.
I quite liked senshin's past efforts to facilitate activity and encourage new content here, but ultimately that also meant that we'd have to want to contribute to that. I would love an opportunity to bring something like that back, but instead of tying it to a theme or anything like that, I'd rather want to see some deeply insightful questions from other anime that are harder to answer. I don't have the rep to facilitate something like that for very long, but I'd still like to see it.
- 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?
Pull 'em aside and have a chat. I'd want to see what's really going on behind those flags and figure out if it's a deeper issue than two users having a disagreement of some sort.
- How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
Moderators should act as a quorum, and we should respect the decisions of fellow moderators. That said, I'd take them aside and ask them why they felt why they took the action they did. Then I'd present my side and give reasons why I feel their actions weren't right. I'm looking for consensus in the decision made, and possibly I would also learn a bit more into how they feel moderation is and should be done around here.
- What example can you point to, either here or on another site in the network, that is most indicative of your moderation style? How would you adapt it to fit for this site?
Of the posts on A&M:
- I'm pretty happy with this one; it communicated my express opinion on what value a series tag holds here, since "the universe" is much broader in scope than "this instance", and "the universe" may not even have an equivalent "instance". (I did notice that it was re-added afterwards, so I went back and corrected that.)
- This one is pretty good too. I feel that a new tag for that subject would've been too broad and I communicated that clearly and respectfully.
Of the posts elsewhere:
I'm quite (in)famous on Stack Overflow nowadays - feel encouraged to look at my answers for more details, but of the posts here, I feel like these capture an applicable style for A&M best:
- In your opinion, what do moderators do?
As a high-rep user on another site, I've come to see moderators as folks that can handle the things that I can't handle. That is, they handle the more intangible issues of the community, such as voting rings, users needing a timeout (potentially), and various parts of the community that no other user is privy to, such as warnings and suspensions, and even deleting comments. Effectively, they clean up the mess that others can't quite clean up. As we've still got beta-level privileges, my reputation here is near equivalent to that of a high-rep moderator-user on a fully-graduated site, so this means that there are a decent number of users here who still contribute to cleaning things up. Moderators are there to help when the community can't quite accomplish it on their own, which I feel is a good role.
- 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 the best cases, it reflects well on the community for having placed their confidence in my history. In the worst case, it highlights that I, too, am human, and make human mistakes.
- In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
This is hard to quantify on a smaller site, but the main issue(s) we would potentially have around here is content that can't be removed in a timely enough fashion, such as content which goes against the ToS of the site. Also, moderators are the only kind of user who can remove comments, and removing offensive comments timely is something only a moderator can help with.
