How are moderators choosen for the site?

Question

I am curious how mods are chosen for the site and if we can provide feedback/evaluate for them. I know that SO has had elections before.

Answer 1

The Pro Tem moderator selection process is discussed on the blog at

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/

With a lot of specifics.

If you are referring to the actual elections, that's described at

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/stack-exchange-moderator-elections-begin/

and

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/trilogy-2011-elections-begin/

Answer 2

The current moderators were chosen by Stack Exchange employees and contacted via email to see if they were interested (basically). Probably based on reviewing the available info for the highest-reputation users on the site at the time. There's also Stack Exchange employees who have moderator access on the site but rarely do any moderating except in really blatant cases (spam, etc).

I don't know when they'll hold moderator elections. I believe the process is that a site goes out of beta (which includes getting a design), a little time passes and then they hold elections. After the election the current Pro-Tem moderators would be removed unless they ran and won in the elections.

I suspect they're holding off on taking our site out of beta until we manage to get more questions per day coming in. See: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2305/bicycles

Answer 3

There's a question on MSO: Is there a time when we elect non-temporary moderators on an SE 2.0 site? Its answer says:

The nominations for moderator elections will start about 30 days after a site graduates from beta.

So the real issue is getting Bicycles to the point where it can launch.

Along with the stats that @frieheit linked to, I strongly recommend that everyone vote (early and often!) any time you see good questions and answers.

Answer 4

I believe now that we're graduating there will be an election process for moderators starting in early September (30 days after we finish graduating from beta). The actual process (nominations, discussion, election) takes a couple weeks, so it will probably be late September when the new moderators take over.