2012 Moderator Election

I'm putting my hat into the ring to be an Ask Different moderator, not because there aren't outstanding candidates, but because I think I too could do the job well. I am a relative newcomer to the site, having joined Ask Different only last August (I heard about it when Ask Different sponsored the Daring Fireball RSS feed), but I've been an active participant in the site every day since then but six, recently becoming one of the top ten all-time reputation earners on the site. Additionally, I'm a regular participant in chat and meta.

While answering questions earns reputation, and I try to do that well, I think my most helpful contributions to the site have been behind the scenes. Until they discontinued flag weight a few weeks ago, I had the highest flag weight of any user on the site, suggesting that I helpfully identified the sort of non-answers and problematic posts that a moderator gently but persistently cleans up. I make constructive edits to try extract the gem of a question from its surroundings in unanswerable rants or confusion. I vote, a lot, to help identify good questions and good answers. Ultimately, I believe a moderator's job is primarily janitorial, cleaning up things that are mislabeled, misposted, or that have found their way to the wrong forum, and gently helping errant users find the right place so Ask Different stays on track.

I believe our current moderators and podcast team are doing a great job with the site. If elected, I believe I would work consistently and well with them. While I have occasionally sought minor refinements to details of policy, on such occasions, I have raised the issue on chat and in meta posts and worked to build a consensus that can make our site stronger.

In summary, I think I've contributed a fair bit to making Ask Different a better site, and should I be elected moderator, I believe I'd have the tools to do even more in that capacity.

I would like to nominate myself to be a Ask Different Moderator.

Ive been on the site for quite a while, I started during the Beta period, etc. I also have been a Mac user since 1995. Through school, college, and even work, I was using, repairing, and teaching people about Macs and various other Apple products. I feel that I am very well versed in almost everything Apple, from iPods to Xcode.

Professionally by day, I am a .net Developer in the Windows world. I actually never used a Windows computer until college, and although I went towards Windows development at the time, I don't use windows at all outside of work. Currently I also do some Obj-C development, working on a few iOS ideas I have had.

I also used to work for a local Apple consulting company, doing stuff like Mac OS X Server setup and maintenance, XSan integration, scripting, or even fixing peoples iPods. During that time, I also have the Apple Help Desk Certification, and was working towards other Apple certifications.

I am rather active on the site, answering questions, making edits, and flagging items. I have also asked quite a few questions myself for when I get lost!

I also use and own a wide range of Apple products (both hardware and software), so I feel that helps really understanding some questions at times, as well as helping people find new solutions to a problem they may have.

This site has been such a wonderful resource to me, and I would really enjoy being able to give back even more as a moderator.

I would like to volunteer to serve as a moderator of Ask Different.

This site is one in which I have received great help as well as been able to comment, edit, answer, learn and hopefully help grow the community that is thriving here.

Personally, I have programmed all manner of computers from assembly back in the in TRS-80 days, all manner of Mac languages in the 90's through the present. I enjoy dabbling in a wide range of topics and consider myself to be a "duct tape" programmer - fine in a pinch, but you'll want to get that looked at if it's going to be a permanent repair.

Professionally, I have been a systems integrator for 10 years and worked in direct customer support for 4 years. I specialized in Oracle database clustering, HACMP, disaster planning and systems redundancy and survivability and change management for critical infrastructure systems that need to work in real time and not fail. We didn't call it grid or cloud computing, but the systems were that and more 20 years ago. On the human engineering side, I spent much time in the field supporting customers as their systems were upgraded on-line or cut over from a legacy control system to a newer control system. My professional focus has shifted over time to be devoted more and more to supporting people and organizations that use Apple products due to the increase in productivity that these tools allow.

I have a passion for helping people of all backgrounds make the best use of technology and am deeply humbled at how rewarding and challenging it is to offer good technical support by working with someone rather than telling them what to do. I look forward to your questions and getting to know the other candidates here in the town hall as part of the election process.

Hi everybody! My name is Jason, and I am an Ask Different user. I co-host the Ask Different Podcast with your benevolent mods Kyle Cronin ♦ and Nathan Greenstein ♦. Ask Different was my second Area 51 graduated Stack Exchange site I've participate on. The first was gaming which I accumulated a mildly respectable 700+ reputation before discovering the 'apple' link in the footer. After getting started in this community I have not stopped, and that's why I've reached as of initially posting this; 418 total visited days, 97 consecutive and counting.

I am a relative Apple newbie compared to people that can claim their active participation in the Apple ecosystem since pre-OS X. Don't get me wrong, I've played my fair share of Oregon Trail on my elementary school's Apple ][es, but I have never really been a continuous Apple product user until sometime in 2005 when I bought a refurbished, first-generation, PowerPC Mac mini. Yes, I got the version with a modem, and no wireless networking. No, I never used the modem.

I was never a wheeled-iPod user, despite wanting one desperately, and I was never a real "classic Mac OS user", so I won't be able to answer your Applesoft Basic questions.

However, I've lived and breathed Mac OS X and Apple at large for at least the last 4 years, and along the way have used nearly every facet of Apple's products and services except for Apple Pro Tools since. I've broken my back carrying Mac Pros and Xserves (R.I.P) into my local Apple store, I've installed plenty of Mac minis' to serve a kiosk-like function, I've setup networks, backup solutions, and even extended networks using the Airport and Time Capsule series of Apple's networking devices.

Oh, and did I mention that I did not copy/paste a single one of the above links to an apple.com page? I've hit them so much I'm able to simply type them in and enjoy the fact that they work. (Fun fact: apple.com/airport now redirects to apple.com/wifi, in order to maintain consistency with the naming change in Lion, no doubt.)

I am in chat as often as possible, I do carry very specific opinions (re: first comment on the question), and I do make mistakes, but more importantly I learn from them.

Only 2 weeks ago did I finally break into the top 10 of users by reputation (all time), and since beginning to contribute to this site I've been rather consistent, whether that's due to my questions and answers, or latent voting well after the fact. Either way, it's fantastic!

I'm nominating myself to become a moderator because I have a lot to contribute to the site, and I'd love the chance to contribute more in any way possible. I consider myself strong in this community and generally feel that all important kinship between the chat room regulars and even those who simply contribute excellent content for the site.

But finally, I do admit that if I am elected a moderator, I will be very disappointed that it will likely become impossible for me to earn the Marshal Badge. (Although I don't consider that a deterrent to proceeding anyway.)

Qualifications:

I've been a member of StackOverflow for over 2 years, since long before AskDifferent was around. I know the system.

Personal Relevance:

I'm an iOS developer, and I have a passion for Apple products and technology in general. When the first round of swag went out, I was on the mailing list.

Involvement:

12K on StackOverflow. I just wrote a guest post for Apple.Blogoverflow.com. If elected, I'll focus much more on Apple.SE and shift some of my focus from Stackoverflow.

I've been a member of Ask Different for 2 months now, and in that time have enjoyed answering questions and generally helping people out.

I think I'd be a good moderator because I'm active on the site, I have moderation experience (running my own forums), respect those around me and above all, I don't do anything by halves - if I'm lucky enough to get the position I'll give it my all and strive to be a good representative of the Ask Different community.

I'm happy to answer any questions and look forward to the opportunity to help moderate my favourite of the Stack Exchange sites.

Hi Guys,

I thought I would throw my hat into the ring as there are currently only three nominees for the three available places. Adding a little competition for the places is a good way to ensure that they are filled on merit rather than circumstance, and hopefully it will encourage some of the other "middle ranking" members to join in, rather than assume that the (well respected and deserving) higher reputation users are a shoe-in.

Firstly a little about myself. I work for a large worldwide IT company, and have over a decade of enterprise Unix Support/Admin experience. Deep down, I love nothing better than to write shell scripts, and consider myself a failed programmer, which is how I would describe any self-respecting unix geek. At the moment I work as an IT Service Continuity Manager, for various clients, and this involves working with every type of computer you can shake a stick at, and some that you can't... From AS/400 to Z-Series and everything inbetween (I honestly had to use a Windows 3.11 for Workgroups the other month), I've had involvement with them all.

Given a choice though, I would happily just use Mac OS X all the time, and indeed I am slowly getting to the point where I do so outside of work. What I love about Mac OS X is that most people have misconceptions about it that are so excruciatingly wrong that it can be loads of fun to open peoples eyes, whether they are new users or refuseniks who don't even want to learn anything or let go of their stereotyped viewpoints. The main misconception is that because of the "it just works" mantra, it must be simple, and simple means it's for people who don't need anything powerful or useful, that's it's for people who have trouble learning a "real" OS. And of course, many things are simple, but don't let that hide the fact that underneath the skin of refined simplicity there isn't a pulsating engine of incredible complexity and power that's there for you to tap in when you want it. Mac OS X is simple to learn, simpler than most other everyday operating systems, but it is also infinitely more powerful than most of the others; it's the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Showing a Windows user how to integrate services, shell scripting and automator to create custom apps rather than having to download a tool to do the same job never gets old.

Having said that, I'd actually rather we all used Amigas...but that's another story.

But I digress. I've been a user on here for approximately 6 months. Typically until recently my activity has been in spikes where I have caned the site all day for a period of time, before not coming back again for a couple of weeks, and that's been down to my daily schedule of work. I would expect to be able to make an appearance pretty much every day from now on to lend a hand in ensuring that the spit and polish new users need is applied in order to make the site more useful. My particular bugbear is the assumed answer question: "I need to do X because I can't do Y and Z fails". The most useful thing I ever learned in IT, and I suspect this practice is applicable in almost any profession, is that if you want an answer, the most important thing is to define the problem properly. And that means no assuming what the answer is; define the problem, don't just ask a question. I see a lot of questions where the answer is assumed, and the question is framed as how to acheive the outcome for the assumed answer, when a lot of users might have utterly different outcomes that the OP had never even thought of had the question been set differently.

So, I love to help people, and I love to answer questions in ways that the OP wasn't expecting. I can be a grammar Nazi where required, but I don't like to heavily edit questions without giving the OP a chance to do it themselves via a quick comment first. As you have probably realised if you have read this far, I can get a little verbose...but I think that's a good thing in it's way. Plus, being in the UK I tend to be on the site in the quieter times when most of the US moderators are still pushing Zzzzs ;)

Anyway, that's a little about me, so if you feel I am made of the right stuff to join the exalted ranks of moderators, and if no-one else can help, maybe you could try...er, me :)