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I've seen/participated in a couple of moderator elections, and indeed have been a candidate in one as well. And I've seen the weak give way to the strong. The new give way to the veterans.

But I've also seen the low-rep pushed out of the way for the high-rep, and I don't like this.

These points are all but arbitrary, a grouping of random people's first impressions of you.

So when the mod election rolls around, what are the standards we should judge by?

  • Reputation Score, which mostly shows how active you or other people are?
  • Time on the site, which indicates when you first found out this page was here?
  • Number of badges, which already borders on arbitrary as it is?
  • Questions answered, which could mean just about anything?

Or can we use numerical values to judge a person for their ability at all?

I know, this is pretty early to worry about this, but I believe that we should come up with a good way to identify what we want out of not only a mod, but also a regular user, and how we use that way to decide things.

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Typically the raw numbers highlighted in elections are focused around moderator specific actions, so the badge count (for example) focuses on the badges around editing and curating posts, rather than just the total count.

Candidates are also encouraged to provide a personal statement about why they want to be a mod and what they would bring to the site, and I believe there are also a set of questions to answer or a chat-room based hustings type setup too.

Just voting by the numbers is like voting for politicians based on their appearance and doesn't end well.

I've seen candidates on other sites that have been comparatively new to the site, but have been active on meta and suggesting good edits that do well.

Also, each site has it's own community and feel, so what happens on one site may not be indicative of what happens here, but we shall see ;)

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