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UPDATE: After discussion with the moderation team, the Community Management Team has went ahead and scheduled an election to start question collection on October 31, and nominations on November 7.

There seems to be a trend recently that whenever someone is elected moderator at Blender Stack exchange personal life takes its turns and takes away your planned availability for moderation.

No one is stepping down at the moment, but some of the current moderators plan to be less active for the foreseeable future, and as such we think additional help would be welcome.

After discussing with the current moderators and the community management team, we're looking at scheduling a moderator election to start some time during October of 2022. To avoid finding ourselves in a situation where an election would fail due to an insufficient number of candidates though, we’re posting this to try to assess the community members' willingness to step up and nominate themselves, when the actual election's nomination period starts.

We would be looking to open up two, maybe three additional moderator slots, but elections need to be competitive, to run a three slot election, we would need at least four candidates. This interest check will help us determine how many slots we should make available.

Being short staffed diminishes moderation quality and frequency. It also leaves little time to do other "site maintenance" tasks and fun activities to stimulate our community and increase engagement.

This may be an opportunity for "new blood" to join the ranks, bringing more action, fresh ideas, and generally avoiding "stagnation".

The winners of the election will join the current moderation team and help make our site grow bigger and better. Moderation is not "a chore:" you get to do what you already do as a regular user, plus you gain access some additional tools and perks to help you with the task.

Please leave an answer if you'd be willing to run for a moderator position.

Note that this is not an official election nomination thread yet, just a "pulse check" to get a notion of how many people here would be willing to step up, so you don't have to put up your whole election nomination.

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    $\begingroup$ What exactly are other "site maintenance" tasks and fun activities that stimulate community and increase engagement? What actually means more action and fresh ideas and general avoidance of "stagnation"? How exactly can you help make the site bigger and better? I would be interested to know if these goals, rules and tasks are clearly defined somewhere or if there is a set of rules for this. $\endgroup$
    – quellenform Mod
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 0:00
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    $\begingroup$ These tasks are not formally defined anywhere, just some general direction of what type of fresh ideas and input we'd welcome from new moderators, to promote growth and "shake things up". Some examples of site maintenance you already know are closing old or unanswered questions that need more details, others may be managing tags (write wikis, remove unwanted ones, set up synonyms etc). $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 10:15
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    $\begingroup$ Fun activities may be try to resuscitate our dying chat rooms maybe by posting cool projects you are doing, challenges or interesting questions, engage with new and old users to make them feel more at home, encourage them to stay around and answer, rather than ask one off questions and leave. Just some vague ideas I had in mind, we welcome some input on this from our candidates $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 10:16
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    $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos I can see why the chat is not very active, there is no link inside the users profile, just at the bottom of the page, new users don't even take the tour. web managers should consider a "CHAT ROOM" button visible in the users profile. $\endgroup$
    – Emir
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 13:20
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    $\begingroup$ @Emir Also the fact that the chat interface looks quite dated and primitive. Notifications work pretty poorly at the moment, a lot of times you miss most replies. Unless you specifically mention someone by name they are not guaranteed to receive notifications. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 13:43
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, that too. The chat needs a complete revamp $\endgroup$
    – Emir
    Commented Oct 3, 2022 at 13:56

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If you guys want it too, I'm interested.

I would be only partially available and quite limited on , but maybe I can help to enrich this wonderful platform a little bit.

Is there a questionnaire to fill out somewhere or do I have to take a test of courage?

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for volunteering. "Is there a questionnaire to fill out somewhere or do I have to take a test of courage?" There will be when/if the elections actually star. For now this is just an informal post to see if we have enough candidates to even move forward with an official election. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Oct 6, 2022 at 21:04
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    $\begingroup$ See blender.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=election for an idea of how the process goes, and look at the posts with "Questionnaire" in the title for the community questions we generally post. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Oct 6, 2022 at 21:05
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    $\begingroup$ "do I have to take a test of courage?" Oh, of course. Along with fighting a dragon. $\endgroup$
    – BlenderMaster15
    Commented Oct 26, 2022 at 13:54
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I think the community functions do a pretty good job of keeping everything tidy, but I am often lurking on the active questions queue and have seen a few things go by that should have been nuked from orbit.

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  • $\begingroup$ Welcome aboard, that is the spirit we are looking for, thanks for volunteering. "Community functions do a pretty good job" they do to an extent but they hide some of the cruft from users, behind the scenes some unseen work accumulates in review queues $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Oct 11, 2022 at 10:57
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Despite my pathetic reputation here, I'm willing to nominate myself if it can help the elections be (more) successful.

Currently I'm a moderator at the very small Arts & Crafts.

I've been using Blender over the span of at least 9 years now, mostly focusing on materials.

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