<h1>Tim (<a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/election/4#post-296709">my nomination post</a>)</h1>

<blockquote>
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  <li>Several tag-related tasks require moderator attention. How well do you feel our community deals with them presently? Would you be able &amp; willing to improve the situation (if it is needed)? How? Related links regarding tag burnination <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3031">1</a> <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3147">2</a>, tag synonym implementation <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1200">1</a>, and tag synonym merging <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2790">1</a></li>
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<p>I agree, that they require. I think that we are not dealing well with them at the present moment. In my opinion, the problem is that you have to have a reasonably high reputation gained for answering the question for some tag to be able to vote for its changes. In many cases moderators intervention is needed if we do not want the process to last forever.</p>

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  <li>What do you see as the biggest problem facing our site and what would you do to help address it?</li>
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<p>The biggest problem is the growing number of unanswered questions, or questions with low-quality answers. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of thing that moderator can help. We need more people who would answer the questions and provide high-quality answers, we need to encourage people to answer the questions (e.g. by providing bounties <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2935/help-spread-the-wealth">as Glen_b did</a>!). </p>

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  <li>Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?</li>
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<p>I don't believe so. I often visit Meta and I participated in multiple discussions on Meta, but it is always about solving or discussing some practical problems.</p>

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  <li>One of the issues which crops up frequently on this site is the dividing line between a statistical question and a computing question. At the moment custom and practice is that requests for code or package suggestions are seen as off-topic. Do you think we have the boundary in the right place? If you do not what is your suggestion for the new boundary?</li>
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<p>This is not a black-and-white issue, there is no clear-cut boundary and never will be. I believe that there were multiple "coding" questions that could be answered as well on CV (e.g. asking about implementing some statistical method), but the boundary is always blurry. <em>For me</em>, the boundary is that if coding question requires the statistical expertise to answer, then it is on-topic.</p>

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  <li>How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?</li>
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<p>It depends... In general, I'd encourage him to stop the inappropriate behavior by comments and by deleting the inappropriate comments by him. If it doesn't help and the behavior is really disruptive, then I guess you need to use more direct moderation steps (<a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/04/06/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/">penalties</a>). High reputation should not give you immunity, rather the opposite, it should encourage you to serve as an example for others.</p>

<blockquote>
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  <li>How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?</li>
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<p>Unless this is an <em>obvious</em> error, I'll bring the issue on Meta to seek guidance from the community.</p>

<blockquote>
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  <li>There is some controversy surrounding our use of Community Wiki status, see <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2953/">What is and what should be our policy on making questions community wiki?</a>. Our current policy is not sufficiently clear, is not being consistently implemented, and is arguably suboptimal (though opinions might differ). What is your opinion on all that? Do you see any of that as a problem? What is your preferred policy? Would you be willing to work towards formulation of some consensus policy and enforcing its consistent implementation?</li>
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<p>Honestly, I don't think this is an issue and don't have any strong opinions on comunity wikis. I feel that they make sense just for the threads like the one with <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1337/statistics-jokes">statistical jokes</a>, where upvotes, or downvotes are used just to promote the "favorite" answer. I don't think that in other cases they are really necessary and have no problem with people getting +1's for things like writing few sentences on their favorite book on some topic the the "what is the best book on..." kind of questions.</p>

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  <li>What do you propose to do about the host of unanswered questions?</li>
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<p>I don't think moderator can do anything about it. I guess we could close more off-topic questions, but on another hand, I feel that sometimes we close too many questions. I believe that the core of this problem is that we have very small number of users who answer the questions. Our answerers are also pretty specialized and, I guess, we lack the answerers who specialize with some topics, e.g. machine learning (as compared to statistics).</p>

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  <li>Do we close questions (for any reason) too much, or too little? Why?</li>
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<p>(This is a question that I proposed.) In my opinion both. We close lots of questions that are slightly unclear, while many of them could be answered. I personally often answer the slightly unclear questions and in many cases I learn that my answer was helpful for the OP. On another hand, anyone can notice (e.g. when using search [that in many cases is unusable]) that we have a huge number of low-quality and off-topic threads. On yet another hand, I guess that putting questions on hold potentially discourages people from using this site instead of providing them with answers, so maybe we should try to be more empathetic?</p>

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  <li>In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?</li>
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<p>I already reached 37k and I believe that the major problem is that in many cases our voting system is inefficient. For example, to approve changes in tags we need votes from users with high reputation <em>for those tags</em> and sometimes it is hard to bring such issues to their attention. Moderators can solve simple problems quicker then community. But honestly, if you look <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/05/18/a-theory-of-moderation/">at the privileges moderators have</a>, they do not really posses any superpowers. </p>
