<p><em>As stated in my nomination remarks, my ultimate goal as a moderator would be to be as invisible as possible. I want to help provide the atmosphere that allows the community to set the course for our site; my objective would be to be available to step in to aid where necessary, but otherwise to get out of the way and let the site develop as the community desires.</em></p>

<p><strong>Q1</strong> (<em>Handling software questions</em>). I think within the last year, the CV user base has reached enough of a critical mass where moderator intervention for closing and/or migrating should be (and, lately, seems to have been) pretty minimal. With this in mind, as a general practice, I would not plan on migrating/closing questions unless I was (a) in agreement with the decision to migrate/close and (b) was the fifth and final vote, thus reducing my participation to that of a "regular" user. This personal <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/quotes?item=qt0475956" rel="nofollow">guideline</a> would extend to all questions, not just software ones, with exceptions being if posts are obviously spam or contained some other content that was strongly against site norms or Terms of Service and required immediate intervention.</p>

<p>I think the direction of the site will continue to evolve and all community members are, and should feel like, stakeholders in what it becomes. That means consensus views on content are likely to change somewhat over time. On a personal note, I would like to see us be <em>slightly</em> more permissive regarding software-related questions in that, even if a question is ostensibly about how to get something done programmatically, if it requires or would benefit from statistical expertise in answering it, we should be willing to do so here. I think we already get that about right, but may have ever-so-slightly drifted towards being a little too quick to migrate.</p>

<p><strong>Q2</strong> (<em>Specific, concrete changes</em>). Much of the motivation for me suggesting this question in the first place was that I was having a difficult time identifying concrete changes I would want to make and so I wanted to see what was driving other candidates to run for moderator. One thing I think CV would particularly benefit from is a somewhat larger user base of active, high-quality answerers. To this end, one of my personal goals will be to try to make new users feel as welcome as possible and get them engaged with the site providing quality answers, yet with minimal emphasis on reputation accumulation.</p>

<p><strong>Q3</strong> (<em>Disagreeing with official SE policy</em>). My perception is that there are various "degrees" of "official SE policy". As regards Terms of Service and fair use, matters are black and white: I believe moderators need to uphold their obligations at all times. At the same time, each site should be allowed a modicum of freedom to develop its own personality and there are certain aspects of SE policy that (a) aren't so iron-clad and (b) don't necessarily make complete sense for our particular community. Those are items that, if they arise, I would be willing to be flexible about if there was a consensus among the moderators that this was alright and there was a similar broad consensus from the community. I believe in maintaining proper discretion; if I have any disagreements with SE policy, I will communicate them in private to SE staff, not air them publicly.</p>

<p><strong>Q4</strong> (<em>Valuable answers, but difficult personalities</em>). This site has been fortunate to experience very few instances of problematic behavior. That is not just luck, but great management from all three moderators (and their predecessors). I am not against some degree of public social correction (e.g., via comments) if it would help orient the user and provide clarity and a good example for others. Anything of a personal or particularly problematic nature should be handled in private, after consultation with all other moderators, and&mdash;if necessary&ndash;SE staff. The major problems I've seen on this site have mostly dealt with overzealous desire to rapidly accumulate reputation with quality suffering in the process; this is something I would like to see mitigated insofar as possible. Quality questions and answers should be our focus.</p>

<p><strong>Q5</strong> (<em>Reversing another moderator's actions</em>). I doubt there will be many instances of this where I feel so strongly that something <em>must</em> be done. Only in very rare instances have I ever disagreed with the judgment of CV moderators based on their public actions. My first step would be to engage the other moderator in private to obtain some details on the situation, especially if I didn't personally witness what transpired. I suspect that oftentimes this would already be enough, as a sensible explanation would then be evident. If the matter were still unresolved, I would request a group discussion among the moderators. If no agreement could be found, I would suggest posting a relevant question to meta. I would <em>not</em> unilaterally undo another moderator's actions except in the extremely unlikely scenario that the moderator had, for whatever reason, obviously "gone rogue". (In that circumstance, SE staff would immediately be notified.) </p>

<p><strong>Q6</strong> (<em>Casting the deciding vote</em>). This was addressed above in my response to Q1. My participation in close/migrate decisions would be as a "regular" user except in exceptional circumstances. I want the community to make these decisions and I think we have the user base to do so now. (That was not quite true even a year ago and certainly not when I joined.)</p>

<p><strong>Q7</strong> (<em>Interpretation of the purpose of CV</em>). I want CV to be <em>the</em> place where people bring their interesting, challenging, stimulating and deep questions (of all levels!) about data analysis, statistics, machine learning, data visualization and attendant topics. They will come because they know they'll get great answers and advice. I would rather see two or three very high-quality answers obtained through some community collaboration than, say, seven to ten mediocre answers from users "battling it out" for upvotes. My own site usage is somewhat unconventional and, as long as a user's mode of use is not disruptive, I think we should allow for such freedom.</p>

<p><strong>Q8</strong> (<em>Prior moderator experience</em>). I do not recall any previous online moderator experience in any formal capacity. I have fairly extensive experience in professional service organizations, international research and standards bodies and private industry where part of my activities have been in conflict resolution and facilitating communication between various parties involving difficult ethical issues like public release of study data. Participation on standards committees, in particular, involves navigating the many opinions of their members and requires a considerable degree of patience and empathy. I would hope to bring to bear some of what I've learned from those experiences.</p>

<p><strong>Q9</strong> (<em>Diamonds!</em>). I have no qualms with having a diamond attached to anything I've previously said or done. Before posting anything, I try to think carefully through whether I would be willing to say out loud to a colleague what I'm about to post online. That serves as a useful guide, for me, at least. If anything, I worry that the addition of a diamond next to a post that is years old may give it an undue air of authority to future readers and I would hope to avoid such potential misunderstandings.</p>

<p><strong>Q10</strong> (<em>Additional effectiveness of being a moderator</em>). I mostly seek to simply complement the existing moderator team in whatever way that I can. In the rare instances that obvious spam has been posted, I've flagged it, but if it happens to be during inactive times, it can go unresolved for a few hours. In these instances, it would be nice to be able to step in and take care of things. Based on usage patterns, some of the times that I'm often available are also times that current moderators happen to be inactive (though we have very active and pretty geographically distributed moderators as it is).</p>

<p><em>If there's anything that I've missed or you feel I haven't adequately addressed, please post a comment and I will reply, or make edits, as necessary.</em></p>
