What's going on with our lack of nominations?

Question

So, I like this site, but I'm not an active user, more of a 'drop by and read cool questions and answers about philosophy so as to find interesting works to read' kinda guy. That said, I figured that somebody else was doing the 'active site' work and now I am concerned that possibly this in not the case. We have 2 nominees for this election cycle. One of them is obviously and patently unqualified (not that non-western Philosophy is wrong, unwelcome, or anything like that, just that the rep, site history, and sole meta post don't speak to capable moderation nor a good understanding of how SE Q&A works). That means this isn't an election, it's a confirmation hearing for Mr. Klöcking. Fortunately, Mr. Klöcking seems like a reasonable choice for moderator.

That doesn't diminish the fact, however, that that looks really bad for our site health. What's going on here, guys? Does nobody want to be a mod? Is our active userbase really that small?

Answer 1

So, most of this is coming from my personal opinion on the situation, but from everything I've seen across the site I think there are other people who feel the same as I do.

First, being a moderator is a job and with all jobs come responsibilities. There are a lot of active users who regularly vote on questions, articulate what they think is wrong with questions they're voting to close, and engage with other users on meta about the direction the site is heading in and every other topic that involves meta-discussions. However, all of those things are being done as part of a symbiotic relationship with the site; one of the reasons we who engage in doing that are doing this because it makes the site better and easier for us to use. When you're a moderator, you can't do that sort of thing out of the kindness of your heart, you have to do it because it's your job. Obviously at the end of the day the job of being a moderator isn't Earth shattering if you mess it up, but it's still a job that you are voluntarily signing up to do. I think it's understandable that a large amount of people would rather contribute on their own time instead of being required to contribute the entire time.

I'm an active user of this site and I'd like to think that most of my questions and answers have been well received, in terms of voting and general community response. In addition to that, I've tried to take a more active role in helping out new people coming to the site, because I agree with everyone else's sentiment that new user retention is difficult and if you just downvote someone's question as soon as they ask it, they probably won't be wanting to come back. In addition to that, I've tried to be as active in articulating why I vote to close questions and what the user can do to improve the question. Finally, in terms of my flagging of posts, 23 out of 23 times I've flagged a post have been found useful, 8 out of the 8 times I've flagged comments have been found useful, and the 1 out of 1 times I've flagged for rude/abusive (I don't know why this was singled out in the stats?) has been found useful via the stats on my user page. So, I'd like to think that I'm at least trying to actively contribute to helping manage the site in a productive and useful way. However, again I feel like I'm more comfortable doing all of these things from an active user perspective instead of taking on the responsibility of a moderator.

Besides what I just outlined above, I feel like I didn't run for two real reasons, one is a minor reason and the other I think is much more substantial. The first one is that I am too prone to argue in comments. It's not a good habit to be in and it's something that I am trying to do a lot less, but right now I do it way too much to be someone who has the mantle of responsibility that a moderator has. It would not make the site look good and I actively want to try and make the site as great as possible.

The second, and more important, reason has to do with my vision of the scope of the site. As a quick aside, I've lurked SE sites for years, I never really had a question that wasn't already asked so I never had the need to ask and I didn't feel the need to get sucked into the reputation chasing system by answering, until sometime last winter at least, so I'm a little bit new to the history of this site. My understanding is that a while ago virmaior was asked to be a moderator here given his background and current status as an academic philosopher. However, (and again I've gathered this just from old meta posts and some recently resurrected drama) he has a self admittedly narrow scope of what he defines as philosophy for this site and that caused issues with people in the past. From everything that I've seen, I feel like I largely agree with his scope of philosophy in terms of this site and I think that the direction I would tend to moderate towards would end up having the same caustic relationship with specific and potential users who disagree.

Really quickly for background, I entered undergrad wanting to double major in philosophy and computer science (leaning towards the theoretical side). After two years of doing this I realized that I was fascinated with what is currently going on in high energy physics (AdS/CFT, black hole information paradox, etc.) and I ended up getting a degree in physics and mathematics (really just a focus on theoretical computer science type math) instead. I still absolutely love philosophy and I've found that this SE has been a great place for me to continue my study/actively write about the subjects that still remain some of my favorite areas of research. That being said, I come from the background of academic philosophy (I was lucky enough to take a two graduate seminars in philosophy of language for some extra credits I needed) and I can't resist the urge to try and lean towards that with regards to this site. Because of all of this, I know that if I were to have run and been elected a moderator, I would have ended up in a similar situation that virmaior was in and, having seen how it played out, that's not at all something I want to deal with. There are a huge amount of people who come to this site that actively hate western academia and just want to start arguments. Obviously, being a moderator means you have to read everything as charitably as you can and I would not be able to do that with these specific people, having seen it as many times as I have. That isn't fair to those people, even if it eventually ends the same way.

This is more of an explanation of why I didn't run for moderator, but I do think that some of these ideas (mostly the lack of wanting more responsibility as well as the drama and hatred that comes with being a moderator) are pervasive in a lot of active users who chose not to run.

As was stated above, four people ran. Three of them mentioned explicitly that they had an agenda and wanted to force the site in a particular direction. I have empathy for most of them (one was someone who was actually just trolling) but I think that the battles they want to fight are much better done across meta first, because they are not going to win an election on a platform of "I want to change absolutely everything because there's a bias that I don't agree with." As was pointed out, one of them very clearly demonstrated that they don't have an understanding of some of the main functions of how SE sites work. That isn't a good look for anyone trying to get a moderator position, even if they aren't trying to push an agenda. I think Philip is going to do a great job, he has actively been encouraging people to improve questions and has been a voice on meta discussions as well. If it turns out he is horrible, I'm sure it will come up on meta and there will be a long community discussion about it.

So I would conjecture, and this is obviously just my conjecture, that the issue is not that we have a small user base, but that people just don't want to be moderators. Having a small user base obviously has a hand in the situation, if there are less people then there are just less people to try and do something, but even if there were only 20 people on an SE, there's always a chance that all 20 of them would want to run. I genuinely think that philosophy is a hard topic for an SE site and I think that is reflected in how many different opinions there are on the site's scope and future direction. If someone wants to take up the responsibility of steering the ship then I will try as hard as I can to communicate with them and hope the situation goes well, but steering is not something I want to personally do at this moment. I believe a lot of other people feel the same.

P.S. This is already too long of a post (one of my other flaws is my answers are too long) but I'll try to articulate one last point to try and explain what I mean by all of what I've said. A while ago there was someone who asked a question and the entire gist of the question was "all people on this site do is link to wikipedia in their answers, nobody is actually doing philosophy. This is disgusting. How can you call this philosophy?" I don't really want to even begin to articulate how I feel about that question, so I'll try to just be neutral and say: this site is not about doing philosophy, it's about answering questions about philosophy. The user who asked that question was told that fact multiple times, because he continued to be transgressive about "how decadent western philosophy is since it's become the equivalent of wikipedia" and I will be as honest with you as I possibly can: I do not want to deal with users like that. There is no bone in my body that wants to deal with that situation or has the patience to be charitable and try to be nice to them. That's a flaw in myself, but it's one I can recognize and that actively makes me not want to be a moderator.

P.P.S. Everything that is going on with this question is exactly what I'm talking about in this post. The original question absolutely violated the be nice policy, and the OP said as much in the comments when they said "I knew it would offend the guilty". After that fact was pointed out they continuously got defensive, saying "this is a forum I can post what I want, you're just trying to censor me because it offends you and you're scared of the truth," then someone else who also doesn't like the moderators comes in and just joins in with irrelevant comments about how the moderators are going to censor this post because they are "pushing an agenda" (half of the comments towards the end have absolutely nothing to do with trying to improve the question or point out the flaws, they're just agreeing that people who don't like the question are the people the question is talking about) and then, as has been the case multiple times recently, the comments devolve into a weird sort of defense of anti semitism: "The irony is that the people doing the most to promote anti-semitism may be the Jews themselves." (What on Earth does that statement have to do with the question being asked?) When someone goes in and cleans up the comments, there are just going to be more comments decrying censorship.

That post was clearly against the rules and all the OP wanted to do was argue about being prosecuted by the moderators for posting "truth that they disagree with on a philosophy forum," ignoring the fact that SE is not a forum which was pointed out multiple times. Who wants to deal with this? I guarantee, as has been the case before, the OP will post more questions like this and get in more arguments until they eventually leave the site after denouncing all of the moderators as perverters of truth.

Answer 2

Actually there were four candidates, two of them were even less suitable/sincere than the other candidate you mention, so much so that they had to leave the election, so the situation you describe is even more manifest.

I think the problem (if there is one) is simply that there are only a very small group of users who fit the necessary criteria for being a viable choice of moderator.

First they must have a high reputation - See this question for a discussion about why this is not all that easy on this site.

Second they need to have been active on Meta, not a problem, but just narrows the list a bit further.

Thirdly, they need to command support for their particular view of the direction of the site. This is the key element that really narrows the field. Like Anna Karenina's marriages there are plenty of alternative views out there, but they are all alternative for different reasons, the only view that is widely agreed upon (even if only by a small group) is the one from which all candidates must be drawn if they are to have a serious chance of being elected. I think this is also part of the reason why voting is so low on Philosophy.SE so this and the first feature actually reinforce one another.

Finally, moderation requires a relatively impartial approach. Philosophy, perhaps more than many other fields, tends to incite passions even among seasoned users.

Add these together, you have a very small pool to choose from. None of the above issues, however, can be effected in any way, nor should they be, they are manifestations of the way the SE sites are set up. Having very few candidates who have a realistic chance of being elected is an unfortunate side-effect. Given that, we should be very grateful that Mr Klöcking is at least willing to take on the work, it would not have been entirely unlikely that we might have otherwise had no seriously viable candidates at all for the post.

Answer 3

"That this kind of puerile thinking [Slavoj ‌‌Zizek's] is celebrated in the universities and among a layer of semi-intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic is testimony to the deep-going crisis of bourgeois ideology." - Zizek in Manhattan: An intellectual charlatan masquerading as “left”

Postmodernism is destroying serious philosophy. When most people agree that "everything goes" or that "everything is knowledge", is there any point left in logic and reason? In philosophy and science? Dark times face the future of the West, and the election of a man like Donald Trump (not even the Republicans wanted his nomination) is a sign of that. Obscurantism is the only way that the elites found that could stop a growing crowd of scientific/philosophically informed masses to overthrown their power. Only a few have noticed that, but the "desire to be part of this century" is making the majority deaf to their arguments. So, it all reflects on the election on this site, where I was the second best candidate, even without knowing exactly how everything here works. Thank you all for the experience!

"(...) consistent ideas at the root of postmodernism (...) threaten to return us to an irrational and tribal 'pre-modern' culture" - How French “Intellectuals” Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained

"Simply holding the view that an objective, measurable reality existed (i.e. logical positivism) was deemed to be a transgression against the group. Holding this view was considered heretical and practically regarded as a sin — I’m not exaggerating." - My Apostasy from the Church of Critical Theory

"In this current state, education resembles, what the ancient Greeks would clearly call tragedy: a downward progression, or fall from a once elevated, more exalted position. (...) Students do not know the Constitution from the Declaration of Independence. Undergraduates fail to learn, let alone master, the rudiments of writing a passable paragraph. (...) As a final insult, and ironically a gift from the latest television programming, adult college graduates struggle to vainly compete with of all people, fifth graders on a game show." - Tragedy and Comedy in Postmodern Education

"We send our offspring off to university with the best will in the world, expecting that they will be instilled with the tools to navigate empirical reality, not inculcated with the compulsion to undermine it." - The Quiet Tragedy of Postmodern Education

"(...) postmodernism gives an escape clause to creationists, global warming skeptics, the Bush administration, and yes, Stephen Colbert, to disregard facts and the reality-based community in favour of their own wishful thinking." - Postmodernism, truth, and bullshit

"Postmodernity is a condition of profound and growing injustice and postmodernism is its legitimating ideology. And while most Western thinkers lie to themselves and argue that postmodernism is a new non-reductive, non-totalising theory of liberation the reality is that it is a condition which means ethnic restaurants and world music for the Western elite and devastation, utter devestation, for much of the Rest." - A Potent Critique of Western Cultural Imperialism [Customer Review]

"Postmodernism. Originally a theme within aesthetics, it has colonized 'ever wider areas,' according to Ernesto Laclau, 'until it has become the new horizon of our cultural, philosophical, and political experience.' (...) Consumer narcissism and a cosmic 'what's the difference?' mark the end of philosophy as such and the etching of a landscape, according to Kroker and Cook, of 'disintegration and decay against the background radiation of parody, kitsch and burnout.'" - The Catastrophe of Postmodernism

"(...) the proposed solution to this state of affairs by post-modernists is far, far worse than the disease: substituting all individualist inquiry with what basically amounts to groupthink, with the determinant of truth becoming who believes it, not why." - Post-modernism: a lie with some truth in it...

Finally, to conclude this presentation of evidences as to why Western philosophy is inside (or very close to) ICU (if not abandoned to its own luck), the Postmodern Generator. That a text like these has been accepted in a "serious" scientific magazine (the Sokal Affair), is evidence enough that something definitely doesn't smell good in the kingdom... Other line of evidence is the number of people here on this site who prefer to ignore what is going on, and never quite pays attention to this sort of denounce.

Abstract (to anyone who still haven't understood how this relates to the question)

Serious philosophy, like serious science, is being treated as the "mother of all vices" by postmodernists. Philosophy is becoming as relevant as alchemy or "flat Earth science". So, if philosophy is nothing more than a "funny, although useless, hobby", why waste one's time in a serious job like moderating a serious discussion forum about philosophy? I think this explains why this site has had much less nominations than its scientific counterparts (i.e. it seems philosophy is much more dominated by the vices of postmodern thinking than the natural sciences).