2010 Moderator Election

Let me introduce myself first. My name is Willie Wong, and for what it is worth, I am a mathematician. And (at the risk of the nomination statements reading like broken records) I have also been a long-time participant in MathOverflow, have been lurking on Math.SE since public beta, and have been involved with TeX.SE since its inception. So I have some familiarity with the type of community the StackExchange platform is trying to forge. Compared to the other nominees, my name may be much less familiar to you, but I assure you this is not due to lack of activity: I do visit the website every working day, so I pledge to be usually available for moderating duties. My (relatively) low reputation score should be taken as a reflection of the large number of very capable people providing answers on this website, and of my personal belief in suggesting improvements to existing answers, instead of posting duplicate ones.

If elected as a moderator, I promise to moderate in moderation :) That is, with the exception of extreme cases of abuse (spammers, trolls, or offensive posts or comments), I will in general defer to the concensus of the community on what is or isn't appropriate, and I ask voters to also help set this website's scope and nature in Meta. I also promise to not involve myself in personal conflicts against other users, and be generally courteous in tone when dealing with whatever situations that may arise (unfortunately, the necessity of using the written form on the internet sometimes lead to unintended interpretations of words; I will try my best in my communications to avoid this).

As to why I want to be a moderator: I was rather late coming to this website, and initially had some reservations about its purpose. I was afraid that it may be overrun with cranks or homework problems. After lurking for a while during public beta, I've been won over by the consistent level and focus of the discussions that take place here, and I want to do my best to help maintain this standard at Math.SE.

I have been an active member of math.SE since the public beta, and before that I was an active member of MathOverflow; I have participated in meta on both sites. While MathOverflow is a uniquely valuable resource to the research mathematics community, math.SE is a valuable resource to the wider community of those interested in mathematics, and for that reason I am committed to seeing it continue to grow and to run smoothly.

I check math.SE frequently, so it would be relatively easy for me to carry out janitorial duties such as closing spam questions. I am particularly interested in merging tags; they are quite cluttered at the moment. I won't take a particularly active role in closing questions other than those which obviously don't belong. I just want to make it easier for interesting questions to be found and answered.

I've been a user of math.SE and MO since the inception of both, as well as the meta forums on each. I would take a relatively light approach to moderation: that is, let the community as a whole close questions (except for obvious spam or duplicates), and allow generally free discussions on meta. On the other hand, I'd be certainly be interested in discussing policies (about, say, homework) with the community. I would of course be willing to intervene when discussions degenerate into flamewars, but on the whole, I would aim to facilitate a more open community.

I think it a useful and worthwhile project to create an active mathematical Q/A at a more general level than MathOverflow and would be happy to serve if elected. Outside of here, I've participated in various aspects of the internet mathematical community (e.g. blogs, MathOverflow, and for a brief while nLab); it appears to hold promise to me, as I have found involvement in it to be productive and enlightening.

I discovered math.stackexchange.com less than 4 weeks (at the time of writing this) ago and I have been a regular follower/contributer since then. I am relatively new to online mathematics and have not been a particularly active member anywhere else, partly because I am relatively new to mathematics itself (I used to be an engineer and switched to math a couple of years ago).

I have been especially interested in this community and also math overflow (which I also joined only recently) because of the absence of discussion format which is probably the reason for the high signal to noise ratio. If elected, maintaining and improving this efficiency would be my main goal.

I believe in a largely laissez faire operation of such sites and as such would trust the invisible hand of the majority to take care of most issues. I generally prefer to keep my discussions technical (as can be seen from my posts) and as such would avoid imposing my opinions.

I wish to see this site prosper and be of permanent value to active and amateur mathematicians at every level. I will try my best to play my part in this.

I am an active member of both math.stackexchange.com and mathoverflow.net. So far mathoverflow has been a valuable source of research-level questions and answers, and I see math.se becoming the same at a more general level.

I would like to see m.se as a site for well-focused mathematical questions and I would take a robust line against spammers, trolls, flamers and so on. So far the site has attracted few of these individuals, but with increasing success, the danger is that more would come. As a former regular on sci.math, over the years I watched the newsgroup degenerate into a bear pit filled with flame wars and crankery. I wish to maintain the high signal-to-noise ratio presently here.

Were I elected, I would regard my appointment as for a period of not more than one year, and I would resign or seek re-election before or at the end of this time.