(1) For pseudonymous candidates, Are you a professional mathematician? In what capacity?
Not applicable.
(2) Assuming a notion of "culture" as explained here, what would a newly elected moderator do to preserve it? Will there be more efforts to preserve the culture, or more to steer it toward things nearer to "what a Stack Exchange forum should be?"
My only sustained experience with StackExchange fora is with MathOverflow and with Mathematics StackExchange, where I have been contributing recently. So I am not quite sure what is meant by "what a Stack Exchange forum should be" beyond these two specific cases, or why the question is formulated as if to suggest there is a contrast between this "should be" and "MO culture". But Gerhard Paseman's original question harks back to the many discussions of concerns about the merger, and how it might affect or shift the atmosphere of MO 1.0 (which many people, myself included, felt generally pretty comfortable with). I recall that quite a few people expressed some worries about the merger, based on their experiences with MSE, which I wasn't very familiar with at the time.
Positive characteristics that I prize in "MO culture" (faute de mieux) and would like to see maintained are: a supportive atmosphere which values free and generous exchanges of information, scholarly care and precision in the formulation of questions and answers, a level of courtesy befitting a professional forum, and a somewhat low-key atmosphere in the matter of competition; in short, those characteristics I'd value in mathematics communities at large. It is that sense of professionalism which sets MO quite apart from MSE.
The MSE culture feels to me very, very different from MO culture, and I like it less. From what I have seen, many hundreds of questions get asked over the course of a typical day (often with a new question every few seconds -- I'm looking at it right now), and there is a general hectic feeling of people rushing around to answer questions, and in my view not taking the time. There is a lot of competence on display there, but a lot of incompetence too. It also feels more competitive to me (who can type out an answer to a calculus question the quickest?) than MO.
With the increased intermingling between the sites, it has become more urgent in my view to carefully preserve what is special about our culture here. I am committed to doing my part to maintain quality control; the idea that questions should be pitched at about or above the level of second-year graduate courses in a top-20 US research department, with attention to precision and due diligence, feels like about the right standard to me. I say this with particular regard to the increase in questions that get posted to MO because they haven't been answered at MSE; often they don't seem MO-appropriate to me.
I am aware that many feel that the MO culture is imbalanced and elitist, and in terms of fostering growth in the population of users, this is definitely a concern. Imbalance includes a heavy slant towards algebraic geometry and allied fields (I would say category theory, my own field, might be over-represented at MO!), and relatively slight representation of hard analysis and applied mathematics. I am not sure why this is -- but I do worry at times that questions in under-represented areas are often closed too quickly or zealously. On a few occasions I've wondered aloud whether a question is quite as trivial as some closers would make it seem. My own record on this score is far from perfect, but I would for example encourage users, before they dismiss a question because it looks like 'homework', to at least make sure they can do the homework! Or generally speaking, to be very careful in making judgment calls when reviewing questions outside one's area of expertise. We need to be more encouraging of under-represented areas; one small step might be helping to edit and improve questions first, before sending them off to closure-land (notice that we rely more on the stock closure reasons than before, where we used to leave helpful comments below the question).
(3) What time zone are you in?
Eastern time in the United States.
(4) How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
I fully expect that the present team of moderators has developed effective ways of resolving such problems. Most of the time, steady users seem to pick up on community norms as expressed in comments and when directed to the faq or to meta to discuss it further.
For mathematically insightful users who nevertheless attract trouble, a reasonable approach would be a private email, appealing to the user's good sense and recognition that this is a forum essentially for professionals, with a matter-of-fact description of what seem to be the trigger points. In most cases, an MO user who produces consistently valuable answers will be familiar with how professional mathematicians behave IRL. Appealing to the professional's sense of decorum and probity should usually suffice. If the problem continues, then follow up by conveying the message that MO users are busy people and that further such nonsense really cannot be tolerated, and that moderators' patience is not unlimited. There are skilled ways of handling such things; as someone on the nLab Steering Committee, I have a little bit of experience here.
(5) How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
I would send a polite private email message to the moderator that asks why the question was closed/deleted, and explain why I don't think I would have carried out the action myself. With the full expectation that all of the moderators are reasonable people who can see two sides of an argument. I anticipate few if any difficulties here.
(6) In your opinion, what do moderators do?
This was actually answered by Scott Morrison in this thread: What do moderators do? Routine day-to-day activities include dealing with flags of one kind or another (spam, offensive posts, calls for Community Wiki which was an important aspect of our old "culture", etc.), answering questions or clarifying policies at meta, dealing with occasional misuse of the site, often through discreet contact. I am a big believer in the StackExchange philosophy that the community should monitor itself, and that the actual function of the reputation system is to have those with more reputation carry more weight and responsibility in that monitoring, with the moderators being around to deal with more specialized tasks.
There are other aspects to being a moderator (which I have yet to learn about) such as conferring with the StackExchange Team on possible feature requests, or fostering community relations and community outreach, or addressing problems such as possible structural biases or causes of under-representation of subject areas or populations, or maintaining growth over the long term, etc.
(7) A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
I feel fine about that.
In terms of what I say (present tense), it obviously won't make any difference in how I write mathematics. It would only affect my choice of words when I am writing on meta or commenting on behavior, since there I am no longer seen as speaking just for myself. But that's fine; I spend an awful lot of time on choosing my words anyway.
In terms of what I've said (past tense): a diamond symbol won't alter the fact that in the past, I've spoken only for myself. I see no problem with that.
(8) In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
I would necessarily become far better informed about the operation of this site, and would spend more time considering how I might be of service to this site. In that sense I would be more "effective" than I am just by indulging in the pleasures of thinking about and writing mathematics, and voicing my opinion from time to time.
(9) Do you think women are underrepresented in the MO community compared to the mathematical community as a whole? Is this a problem for MO? If so, what would you do about it as a moderator? See also: 1483 and 985
There is no doubt in my mind that women are significantly underrepresented in the MO community, even relative to their representation in the mathematics community at large, and even if we assume that many of the pseudonymous users are women.
I do feel there's something wrong with that picture; it certainly doesn't reflect positively on MO, and it would be terrible if MO were helping cement institutional gender bias (quite in spite of the good and honorable intentions of many). The linked-to discussions, which I remember, included some valuable input from a number of women, touching upon the difficulties women mathematicians face in being taken seriously by male colleagues, or being shunned as too aggressive or competitive when the same behavior by men is often rewarded. There was some discussion of women preferring to post under pseudonyms, for various reasons. The general impression I get is that the problems as they are being reported are often subtle and not overt, but nevertheless cumulative and pervasive.
No conclusions were reached at that time (indeed, some of these discussions just went downhill). It's just not clear at this point what we can or should do; as said, the problems as reported are subtle and difficult to point to. But what I might propose as moderator, with discussion and input from the community and internally between moderators, is first to hear the thoughts of more women on this topic. I propose designing a survey to solicit the opinions of female users of MO (and maybe branching out from there); it is not a difficult matter to set up a site where they can go to fill out the survey anonymously, and then the data can be more systematically analyzed. Maybe we'll then have better ideas of what we might try.
(10) As MathOverflow is growing, the diversity of the moderator team might become an issue of interest. As I understand, the present moderators have much in common, and women are, to say it that way, underrepresented. In which way do you think would you contribute to the diversity of the moderator team?
I would likely be the only moderator who is not actually part of academe or professionalized mathematics. (I left academe in 2001, and work as a full-time parent; mathematics is something I do on the side.) In that wise, I have some appreciation of what it is like for those who do not feel part of an academic in-crowd. (Also, as a "Mr. Mom", I have a somewhat unusual angle on how it might be for many women, as they balance the demands of parenthood and maintaining a home with the desire to pursue their intellectual or artistic passions.)
