2019 Moderator Election

I'm Dan, I'm a PPL student & aviation enthusiast in the UK, and I'm a long-time user on this site. I'm not always active here, but I'm always in the chat, which I believe is important for a moderator. I also try to promote the site offline e.g. in my flying school.

I was an elected moderator for Android Enthusiasts for two years when I worked on Android, stepping down after my career and life moved away from that platform. My work there wasn't just the day-to-day moderation, but also engaging with other regulars on the site, understanding what they want from the site - why they're in the community - and using that to help the community examine the site's policies to make sure they served people's needs. I tried to steer people away from too much rules-lawyering in a grey area of the on-topic guidelines.

I'm currently pro-tem mod for Computer Graphics beta, a much smaller site than this. I'm standing here because I like this site, I think it's important, and I'm volunteering to take on the responsibility to ensure the community can remain healthy and continue to grow.

About Me:

I am currently a college student who is interested in computer science and physics, especially when it relates to modeling fluids. I an avid radio-controlled aircraft pilot, airplane enthusiast, and I hope to someday get a pilot’s license.

Why I would be a good moderator:

Although I had some trouble getting used to Stack Exchange at first when I was younger, I now delight in being able to complete the moderation tasks currently unlocked for me. If possible, I try to check the review queues and any active questions multiple times per day hunting for spam. On a typical day, I am active at least once per hour from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM EST which means that I am often the first person to review and flag posts. If I am elected moderator, I would be able to not only flag posts, but also be able deal with the other side of things relatively quickly to lower the exposure time of spam posts.

What about my low reputation?

Yeah, I know. I mostly ask and edit questions instead of answering because I simply have not found any questions to which I have a solid base of knowledge. Instead of answering, I mostly spend my time in the review queues or patrolling for spam.

I actually see Aviation.SE as a great example of working community moderation, to the point that it could easily do without dedicated mods.

I'm a big fan of the "everything in moderation" principle, especially as it applies to moderation. If elected, I'll strive to mostly do what the community would've done, just sooner. One area I'm going to pay particular attention to is reopen votes.

An exception where I'll be more hands-on is closely monitoring anything that gets on the "Hot network questions" list, to avoid resorting to the backup solution of protecting them unless it's really necessary.

My activity here has been mostly focused on answers. But I've been moderating online communities for ~20 years now, as I like to tidy up any place where I spend a lot of time. I'm here every day and Aviation.SE is my primary site on the SE network, so my attention isn't divided.

One Meta discussion I plan to revive is the issue of list questions. Should the community decide to go with the wikis solution, I'll take on maintaining merged lists as one of my top duties.

I would like to be a moderator of Aviation.SE to help contribute more to the running of this community. I am very active in the review queue, trying to weed out issues and help new users when I can. I also try to keep up with discussions in chat and meta. As a moderator I would continue to consistently be present and willing to spend time working with the other moderators to keep our community running smoothly.

If elected moderator, I would still visit the review queue regularly but prefer to press "skip" and let other users decide. The exception would be cases where posts clearly need to be closed/deleted. For those I think it would be helpful to provide quick action, and I would try to communicate the reasons for this to newer users. I value the input of the community and would be happy to discuss any questions/issues in meta/chat.