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I have noticed that Mariano Suárez-Alvarez is no longer listed among the moderators and his profile page no longer shows diamond by his name. (I am pretty sure I remember that he was one of the moderators on MathOverflow. In the post on History of MathOverflow he is still listed among moderators as "October 2013 - present".)

I was a bit surprised by this, since I did not notice any announcement of this. (My impression was that if there are changes among moderators, this is usually mentioned on meta.)

Although it seems unlikely, it is at least theoretically possible that the diamond on MO was removed by mistake. For example, this could have happened when he stepped down as a mod on Mathematics - this was announced together with 2018 Community Moderator Election Results (on 14 August 2018).

TL;DR: Is Mariano Suárez-Alvarez no longer MathOverflow moderator?

I apologize if this post sounds as an attempt to stir up a controversy - that is definitely not my intention. I think that moderators play a very important role on the site, so the users should know who are the moderators. In addition to that, if Mariano Suárez-Alvarez indeed decided to retire as a MathOverflow moderator, this thread might be also an opportunity to express gratitude for his service.

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Mariano hadn't used the moderation interface for an extended period, and was proving hard to contact. The StackExchange staff said they wanted to remove his diamond, mostly as a security measure.

We didn't object (SE raised this in the moderator chat room, and I suspect not everyone had even seen this), but I think that if there is concern, either from Mariano or the community, it should be an easy step to reverse.

Apologies for the poor communication around this.

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the response. Let me just say that I disagree with the last sentence - about "poor communication". I was under the impression that most likely explanation is that the moderator in question resigned - in which case some kind of announcement would probably be reasonable. Since from your answer it seems that so far there was no response from him and it is possible that this is just temporary, I think the things have been handled perfectly fine. In any case, at least now we know what the current situation is - in case some other users notice this and are curious about the reasons. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Oct 2, 2018 at 12:32
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    $\begingroup$ The user page for Mariano suggests he has been away for half a year. Without prying into his personal affairs, I would like to send him regards and either know to look forward to his return, or wish him well on his journey away from MathOverflow. Can someone forward this message to him, and/or let us know his status? Gerhard "Hopes Mathematics Sees His Return" Paseman, 2018.10.02. $\endgroup$
    – Gerhard Paseman
    Oct 2, 2018 at 15:03
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    $\begingroup$ In some sense, that's an argument for regularly moderator elections. $\endgroup$
    – tj_
    Oct 2, 2018 at 15:10
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    $\begingroup$ @GerhardPaseman: Mariano's page says that his latest login was on September 25th. $\endgroup$
    – Alex M.
    Oct 4, 2018 at 14:40

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