Low quality of election nominees

Question

I recently noticed that elections for 3 moderator positions were going to be held. I looked through the list of candidates so far, and actually found people with, like 500 reputation, among the candidates. Also, I found that all votes were given equal value. So, I am posing 2 direct suggestions relating to elections.

1. One must have much more reputation to contest, 5000, atleast.

2. Votes of people with more reputation should have greater value. Maybe those with 1k-25k rep could have a vote worth 3 normal votes, and above 25k (and moderators) could have a vote worth 5 normal votes.

I am sorry if these issues have already been discussed somewhere.

Answer 1

For now

I don't think we can change the rules of the game after it began. We can comment on nominations, though. No need to be harsh; just leave a matter-of-fact comment puncturing the bubble.

Also, use the page Moderator Candidate Statistics, not just the nomination page. It offers more statistical information about the candidates, in a very readable layout. It is also less cluttered because the comments under nominations are omitted.

In the future

We should move toward stricter requirements for nominations; the site is now big enough to have big-city problems, including frivolous nominations. The moment this is brought up I hear the shouts of Rep! Rep! Moar Rep! but this is not the only or even the main thing I have in mind.

Stack Overflow requirements for nomination are: 3000 reputation and the badges

• Deputy (raising helpful flags)
• Civic Duty (voting)
• Strunk & White (editing)
• Convention (participation on meta)

There are currently 49 users meeting these criteria. The query sorts them by the last access date (as of the last data refresh), so that the inactive users are at the bottom. (I count 7 as no longer active, 3 are current moderators.)

^{(An aside: I hope some of the users on this list will nominate themselves. I will not single out anyone in particular.)}

This does not seem to be a wide enough pool of candidates. Dropping the editing badge and lowering threshold to 1000 does not make much difference: 57 users.

When Convention is also dropped, 121 users meet the criteria. This looks more realistic.

We might also be more flexible and require, say, any two of the aforementioned four badges. The point is, some prior effort to serve the site must be a prerequisite to be considered for moderator's role.

Answer 2

I personally didn't expect to see many viable candidates nominate themselves in the first 24 hours. Granted, I also didn't expect the level of trollish nominations we're currently seeing. Right now it is probably important to try to ensure that this doesn't have a chilling effect on those serious potential candidates who are likely still mulling over whether or not they want to be part of this gong show process.

I know that I didn't decide to throw my hat in the ring until two days prior to the primary in the previous election. I thought pretty hard about what the heck I was (potentially) getting myself into, and whether I was up for it. I expect others are doing the same this time.

So, yeah. While things look pretty bleak right now, and changes are likely needed to forestall a repeat occurrence next time (and, sorry, I don't really have any concrete suggestions at this time¹), we're still less than 24 hours into a week-long nomination period. And there's more to come after that. We'll have ample time to do a post mortem when this thing is all through. Take notes and screenshots, and think about what could be changed.

But also go out and try convince those you'd like to see run (and who haven't already announced their intentions not to) to put their hats in the ring. Think about whether you have what it takes to take on the responsibility. This election need not (and should not) be defined by its first day.

¹_{I do think that very high rep requirements will be counterproductive. But mod nominees should at least have the ability to access the review queues. And as much as I might like my votes to be worth more, I cannot in good conscience agree that some (election) votes count more than others.}

Answer 3

There are two problems here:

1. The requirements for nominees are still very low. This is the first election here that has needed higher requirements - which is a good problem to have, but one we didn't anticipate. For the next election, we'll definitely work with y'all to tighten them up a bit, but for now I've made a small change that should ease the strain a bit.

2. A few people nominated in bad faith and were not immediately withdrawn. That's my fault - I'll keep a closer watch on nominations going forward and immediately withdraw those that are clearly not serious.

Consider these both to be growing pains - Mathematics Stack Exchange is becoming quite the place to be!