SOCVR nomination for ryanyuyu

Nomination_ryanyuyu.md

Greetings.

My name is Ryan, and I've been actively moderating Stack Overflow since January 2015. I actively participate on meta, and I'm interested in keeping Stack Overflow awesome. As my many MSO answers show, I've become very familiar with how Stack Overflow works, and I eagerly try to help others get the most out of the site.

My moderation style focuses around communication. I believe that, more often than not, users are trying to do the right thing, but that they often can't express what they're trying to accomplish. Proper edits and timely comments can get posts back on track and resolve conflicts before they get out of hand. Likewise, as an RO, I would first try to diffuse situations by making sure that everyone is on the same page. I am not shy in editing posts to make them more understandable, especially to fix grammar.

Our room can be very powerful if used incorrectly. The most public form of that power is as a voting ring.

As a hypothetical: a user (non chat member) posts a meta answer about the closure of a post on Main. In this answer, the author gives the implication that our room is a voting ring. What do you do?

Can you give an example where you defused a situation by bringing everyone on the same page?

Simple (and explicitly open-ended) question: what is a room owner and what does that title imply in your opinion?

Our room can be very powerful if used incorrectly. The most public form of that power is as a voting ring.
As a hypothetical: a user (non chat member) posts a meta answer about the closure of a post on Main. In this answer, the author gives the implication that our room is a voting ring. What do you do?

First, I try to understand exactly what the user is actually saying. Then, I investigate the claim and try to figure out what happened. My next actions depend on a few things:

• If the closure is warranted, and there isn't any targeting of the user, then I just explain the reasons for closure. I'd cite resources as needed, and offer the rest of meta to assess the situation for themselves.
• If here was a little too much digging into a specific user, I would apologize for actually being a voting ring. I would reprimand our chat users who went too far. Then in meta, if the closure was still warranted anyway (excepting the fact that this user was targeted) I'd explain that.

Can you give an example where you defused a situation by bringing everyone on the same page?

I was a bit late to this particular argument, but I do believe that my summary that the two disagreeing sides actually were arguing for the same thing helped to bring the argument to a close. More generally, I also comment/edit meta posts that have unpalatable wording likely to attract downvotes.

Often, questions askers on meta don't fully understand how Stack Overflow works, so I try to get to the heart of the misunderstanding and keep discussion on-topic and helpful. For example, I correctly interpreted and brought this meta discussion back on-topic.

what is a room owner and what does that title imply in your opinion?

A room owner is a representative for the chat room. They are the people that others will look to first for determining the culture of the room. Additionally, as the SOCVR home page describes, ROs also are responsible for keeping everything in order. This includes housekeeping stuff like cleaning up processed cv-pls and more serious duties like chat room moderation.

What is one thing that you would add to, change in, or remove from the current guidelines or FAQ?

What is one thing that you would add to, change in, or remove from the current guidelines or FAQ?

I would emphasize Rule 17: "Moderate the post, not the user. Keep the discussion on the merits of the post, not on behavior of the user." I think that much of the drama that pops up arises from an offhand remark along the lines of "that user has a pretty bad question history." At this point, we have already opened the door to targeting users and we need to stop immediately. We need to be more proactive in heading off this kind of behavior. And now, we have a really good MSO discussion to remind people to focus on the post.