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In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session 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. I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.

The Town Hall Chat took place Wednesday the 13th at 21:00:00Z UTC / 4:00 PM EST. A digest is available here

Here are the details so far:

  • I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase. This means that I am looking at the 11th-14th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the "when".
  • The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our chat platform. I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.
  • The format will be an open discussion. Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.
  • Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.
  • After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here.

2 Answers 2

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I'd like to quote from a comment I put on my nomination:

"[...]so I hope that the Town Hall chats offer a fair chance for every participant to actually participate, taking into account geographical and timezone discrepancies. AskDifferent is not just an American website for Americans. As of the time of this comment, 3 of the 6 nominations are from Europe, and 2 of the remaining 3 are not entirely serious."

Since then one more US candidate has entered.

I'll look forward to the mail, and hope that a happy medium can be made to satisfy all candidates.

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  • 5
    I was going to post the same thing, but you beat me to it. I'd like to add that last year, the Town Hall was at a time when it was very hard for non-US candidates to participate live, and we ended up with an election that gave us a team of five moderators in the same country, leaving significant time gaps in moderation coverage for this world-wide site. Given that the moderator coverage the site needs most is from non-US time zones, I'd strongly like to encourage the powers that be to schedule the Town Hall at an appropriate time for this.
    – Daniel Mod
    Feb 8, 2013 at 21:23
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    I'll do my best to try and fit a more popular time period. Having had to stay up in the wee hours, or wake up extra early, to accomodate other site town hall chats, it's not unfamiliar territory for me to run in any time zone. The mail was sent out a while ago, by the by.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Feb 8, 2013 at 21:44
  • Ah, now I remember I use my GMAIL account for login, but nothing else...not been in there for months...!
    – stuffe
    Feb 8, 2013 at 21:54
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    Done. Was kind of difficult to find time between work (where I can't join a chat for one hour), family commitments and sleep. Good luck with finding a slot.
    – nohillside Mod
    Feb 8, 2013 at 22:11
  • Yeah, I don't envy you that task!
    – stuffe
    Feb 8, 2013 at 22:13
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    I'd be jazzed to get a time when candidates from Europe can attend and participate. It'll be an interesting challenge since part of the discussion is to allow maximum site participation (even if all the mods and candidates can attend a 3AM meeting), it's also nice to have the chat when interested parties can ask / dialog. As bad as it is to lack candidates during the live chat, lacking the crowd to grill them doesn't have as good a mechanism for delayed participation as a delayed answer.
    – bmike Mod
    Feb 8, 2013 at 23:20
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    I hope that the time slot I picked is acceptable. It's basically an evening timeslot for most European timezones, though the particular hour had to be such to fit as many people as possible.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Feb 11, 2013 at 12:43
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    Well done (at least for me), thanks a lot!
    – nohillside Mod
    Feb 11, 2013 at 12:44
  • Thanks @GraceNote for making this happen! This is very good for the site that you found a time slot that works for so many people!
    – Daniel Mod
    Feb 11, 2013 at 20:15
  • I can make this one, and I'm already sharpening my metaphors.
    – stuffe
    Feb 11, 2013 at 21:36
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I give up. I've been trying to log in to chat and I keep getting "site down" messages. Best wishes to you all.

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    Hey there! I'm sorry that the chat has been unsuccessful. Chat system itself did go somewhat down for a period of time, and while it's "running", it's still a bit patchy. We all fully understand your difficulty, and thank you for having taken as much effort as you did to try and get on. Hopefully by the end of the night, the system will be a lot more stable and you'll be able to post your answers with ease.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Feb 13, 2013 at 21:48

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