<p>I think you ask two questions, which I will paraphrase.</p>

<blockquote>
  <ol>
  <li>Can CV.SE get special dispensation to change gold badge requirements?</li>
  </ol>
</blockquote>

<p>The only people who have the power to do this are the folks who run Stack Exchange. You can raise it with them, but I doubt they would agree, just because they won't want to open the floodgates and take on management of dozens of different domain-specific modifications.</p>

<blockquote>
  <ol start="2">
  <li>Does CV.SE need a moderator to specifically moderate the growing number of questions in <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/machine-learning" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;machine-learning&#39;" rel="tag">machine-learning</a> or <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/neural-networks" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;neural-networks&#39;" rel="tag">neural-networks</a>?</li>
  </ol>
</blockquote>

<p>I think there's a compelling case to be made here; the interest in these topics is growing. We have some dedicated users who answer these questions, but it is sometimes the case that threads bearing these tags are left to languish  in the sense that their are unanswered, or answered poorly, because they are unanswerable in their breadth or lack of clarity. </p>

<p>Or, the same questions are asked over and over but are not closed because it is challenging to identify the duplicates, or the closure effort stalls at 3 or 4 votes, just shy of the 5-vote threshold. Stated another way, the specialist knowledge required to recognize and close as duplicates <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/machine-learning" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;machine-learning&#39;" rel="tag">machine-learning</a> and <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/neural-networks" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;neural-networks&#39;" rel="tag">neural-networks</a> questions is not present among a quorum of users who are active in the closure queues. (This analysis assumes that the other reviewers are voting to "Skip" rather than register "Open" or "Close" votes; this isn't necessarily the case, though. Perhaps only 2 or 3 other users agree with me in the votes which fail to achieve quorum, in which case the VTC queues are working as intended!)</p>

<p>None of this is intended as a criticism of our current moderators. I believe that our current moderators are knowledgable, fair-minded, and even-tempered. I only mean to suggest that there is a small gap in moderator coverage pertaining to these particular topics.</p>

<p>A moderator would have unilateral power to close threads and mark as duplicates.</p>

<p>My understanding is that for a moderator election to happen, the SE website merely needs to make a request to the SE community team, and an election will take place.</p>
