The above arguments are exactly the reason why I don't think the votes will bring anything close to a result. While some might think that a mod is fair in his moderation if he is somewhat lenient, others might feel that another mod deserves to be a global mod due to his activity(I belong to the latter, although there is no exact data on a mod's moderation) and others might want someone promoted for (close to)no reason at all. If anything perhaps the votes of members that theymos finds trustworthy, would somewhat influence his decision.
There's a multitude of reasons why doing this isn't a good idea at all (many of which have already been mentioned), not to mention if theymos hasn't asked for it it's probably a waste of time and irrelevant. To me it just seems like one big popularity contest and mods aren't made or promoted based on how popular they are but based on whether they're beneficial/needed and only theymos will have access to the exact info to be able to make that sort of decision. I see a lot of people voting based on how 'active' people are on the forum but they seem to be basing that on how active you are in
posting, yet they will have no idea how many reports that mod is responsible for handling or the time they actually spend browsing the forum or reporting posts themselves. You could make little to no posts here but be responsible for handling most of the reports, whereas you might spend most of your time here posting and not handling many reports. You could also be the most friendly/popular mod among users but maybe not the best at actually moderating in whatever capacity. The person who may actually be the best at moderating may be the least favourite among users. People will take a dislike to you just for just doing your job properly and following the rules so that gives them a disadvantage from the start.
Personally, I think there should be several criteria involved:
You should be very, very active. One of if not
the most active staff member here (no point promoting someone if you're not here much or there's others that are here twice as much).
You should have been a moderator for quite some time (personally, I don't think a patroller or Local board Member should go straight to Global without having moderated other larger sections first which they could be promoted to in due course if they do a good job and are obviously very active. Put in the time and effort and you'll likely get promoted further over time).
Should be in the very top percentage of staff who handle the most reports a month (and accurately so).
Report a lot of posts (if you're not really reporting any posts yourself for whatever reason then there are plenty of other staff that still are and would be more beneficial to promote them instead).
Personally, if I was going to choose I would say mprep fits the above criteria the most but he currently seems to be one of the least popular choices and I think that's down to because he doesn't post or interact much here (not a bad thing). On the flipside, maybe there's a staff member that handles twice as many reports as he does but that's why only theymos should be deciding this stuff.
Lastly, I do not see a reason for another Global mod.
Eh, it seems a bit obvious that you were not (actively) around for a while. Some (even obvious) reports tend to take several days to handle (at times).
What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to others (or it may have been marked as 'bad'). Sometimes I see reports from others and I'm not sure about them or am sliding towards marking it as bad but leave it to see if another mod thinks it's good or bad or just leaves it themselves. If every Global/Admin hasn't handled a report after a while then it's likely for a good reason or certainly not urgent. I think urgent reports get handled
very swiftly and the only reports that ever stay in the queue are mostly for nonsense ("he's trolling me" i.e. he said something they don't like or agree with). I wouldn't be against a new Global but if we promote one more that doesn't magically make everything ok either. What happens when they're away or at work or whatnot? A few months down the line will we be having another popularity contest or the mods who finished second or third will be claiming the same thing "reports are taking days" and I'm next in line? I do think a better solution would be to spread the workload out a bit. Currently there are several boards with no mod at all, not to mention big boards like Bitcoin Discussion and Marketplace only really have Globals attached. Every board should have one or two non-Globals attached and this will solve that issue of any reports not getting handled.
Votes should be objective, ergo you should not vote for someone due to bias.
In an ideal world they should be objective but we don't live in an ideal world. People will vote against you just because you removed them from a campaign. People will vote for you just because you're from their country. People will vote for or against you just because you do or don't have the same politics or beliefs as them. What happens if there's one user with dozens of accounts that likes or dislikes you? That would probably put you out of the race instantly.
Mprep will probably get votes from altcoiners since he moderates the altcoin section and thus altcoiners interact with him more.
On the contrary, those people could likely vote against him. I've lost count of how many times people have created butthurt threads about him just for doing his job correctly (there's even a joke thread in the Staff forum created for logging every time he got a hate thread). This is why this whole process is silly. The person who is most suited to the job likely doesn't have a chance not to mention the people voting for them have no idea who is best suited and are voting on completely biased reasons.
The point is, when searching someone who can in the best case be active on a daily basis handling reports on global level,
candidates that aren't abled to respond to a PM in a weeks time kinda already fall out of the pool by that.
Maybe they didn't want to be involved in a popularity contest? I'm not sure if I would have responded to the PM either and certainly wouldn't have been happy to be involved in such an election. Nothing good is going to come of this. There's only going to be one happy staff member at the most and they'll likely just be disappointed or upset if theymos didn't choose 'the people's champion' and went with someone else instead.
Based upon the above objective criteria, both Lauda and Mitchell are qualified. Both are patrollers (IIRC) and both moderate multiple sections; Lauda moderates croatian and speculation and Mitchell moderates Beginners & Help and Project Development. Both have also had their positions for a decent amount of time.
So are mprep and Eal (amongst others). Both who have moderated their sections for much longer, but one seems to be out of the race already and one was never even in it to start with. I'm sure there's others who would have also liked to be included.
Personally, I don't think the result of this matters at all so even if you didn't get m/any votes or weren't even in it to start with I wouldn't worry or be disappointed. Thread should just be left to run its course and be deemed a silly bitcointalk social experiment at best. People have stated their interest in being a Global and theymos can take that into consideration along with all the stats/info he has access to but this thread shouldn't decide anything other than who is the most popular non-global mod.
