Martin is my given name, マーチン is a japanese transliteration (and it reads maachin)
What is your opinion on the various types of homework questions and how they should be handled?
I think homework questions are vital to this site. They produce a never ending stream of traffic to our site. They are a good way to introduce the page to new users and more often than not they are profitable for more than the person asking. I think most importantly they generate a possibility for even high school students (or beginning learners in general) to answer those questions in return, making them an integral part of the community.
Personally I like homework type questions, they are usually nice puzzles, where you can let your mind drift away. I enjoy reading them and occasionally, if I have the time and the knowledge even answering them.
Of course the question has to be well asked. This is why we have the homework policy in the first place. Our goal as a community should be to improve the asked homework questions and guide the askers. (Shouldn't we be a bit more welcoming to new askers/ posters?) Most of the times this can be achieved by leaving a comment with a link to the policy. Sometimes it is possible to give an initial hint and wait for the user to improve the question.
In cases that violate the policy it is necessary to close the question. This applies especially to the questions where the exercise is copied verbatim (or even worse: just a screenshot), with no effort at all. If you would have asked me the question about a year ago, I would probably have said, close it as soon as possible. I am not so sure about that anymore. While I think that the reopening process works quite well on this site, I also think it is quite a slow process in the first place (much slower than closing). Closing a question might even be too discouraging and the user might never return, leaving the post dangling in the aether. I would nowadays probably opt for a little more breathing space for the user.
The discussion about homework questions will undoubtedly rise again. About a year ago jonsca summarised it quite well: Thanks for being more diligent about homework questions! I believe this post is still up to date. And to end this question, I would like to encourage each and everyone of us to upvote good homework questions, reward the effort made.
Do you think that a moderator should close and delete a scientifically relevant on-topic question for "legal reasons", because it touches the field of scheduled or controlled compounds? With other words: What is your stance on legal and moral concerns vs freedom of information?
To be perfectly honest here, I don't really understand the question. I am not an expert on legal matters. If a question is scientifically on topic it should not be closed and as a further consequence it should not be deleted. An example can be found in "How to represent a 3D model of cocaine?" This clearly 'touches' the field of controlled substances. It is perfectly on topic here as will many questions of this kind. Another question would be about the synthesis of controlled substances. Even here this might be of educational value. Of course we should not become the primary source for recipes to synthesise drugs. There is a whole field of pharmacology and toxicology out there and in some countries it is required to obtain knowledge on this field before receiving a degree in chemistry. I think the primary goal in answering these questions should be making safety issues aware to the asker and all other people reading the post.
When it comes to questions about medicine or drugs, there is already a custom close reason in place: How should we approach questions asking for chemical hygiene or safety/medical advice? I think the community here is aware enough of questions of this kind and moderator intervention might not even be necessary. A good example for these kind of questions can be found here: Looking for a compound. As long as such questions are not actively encouraging illegal activities, I do not see a reason why it should be removed. As a moderator I would be heavily relying on the community and in doubt bring it to meta to have a discussion.
You are invited on a prestigious mission to Mars to explode — ahem run tests on — the soil there. Clearly, you won't be able to moderate this site from there, and must reluctantly step down. Which, if any, of the other candidates would you recommend your voters go for, and why?
If it's not a TARDIS, I won't go aboard. If it is, I do not see any reason, why I should not be able to perform my duties. (You won't even notice that I am gone.)
I trust all of the other candidates and it already bothers me enough to make a choice on the election page. Everyone is perfectly suitable for the position and I believe the community will profit from each and everyone. Most of the times moderation is a community effort anyway.
This being said, I trust each and every user to make up her or his own mind.
What time zone do you live in? When (UTC) would you be active on the site, moderating?
Thank god, finally an easy question. I do currently live in Japan, which is UTC+9h. Unfortunately this will change within the next year, although it is not clear when. I have not a well established sleeping pattern, so predicting when I am online is almost impossible. Let me put it that way: I usually cover more than half a day. The exception is the weekend, where I am often out, but I would probably still find the time to have a look on flags, etc..
As the site grows, inevitably more time must be spent on moderation duties, and it should be taken into account that Chemistry.SE is young and may see high proportional growth in the following months. Would this significantly impact the way you currently contribute to the site? Do you feel this change in focus may potentially affect your overall enjoyment of the site and how much do you care for it? There is a large difference in contributing where you want at your desired pace, and being on call to solve problems.
I welcome the growth, I hope for it. I wish for diversity and more involvement. With a growing site, of course the community will grow, too. I believe many of the moderating is already done by the community, which should make it easy to adjust. I do not think that this can or will in any way impact my enjoyment of the site. Most of the time I keep an eye open on temporal issues already. I am a big fan of the tools page that is accessible for 10k users. You can easily find questions that need guidance and/or attendance. These are often enough things that can be managed in little time.
Since I have never been a moderator on such a site I cannot judge how this will impact how many questions I will answer. Whenever I answer I like to do a thorough bit of research, that is why I often answer questions very late. I believe there are several tabs open in my browser, which I find genuinely interesting and where I would like to write a thorough response. Unfortunately this takes time in any case, so I think being a moderator won't affect this.
Have you ever been in an argument with another user? Have you ever flared up on this site? If yes, how did it end?
A couple of months there was a User, who did not play by the rules, policies and/or guidelines. Guidance was given by the whole community, often it was completely ignored. The sad turning point was, that he offended me (and a couple of other users) personally. I have to admit, that there was a brief period where I thought I would have to let this site be. As a consequence of all of his actions this user was banned for a year. I am a very forgiving person and I tend to forget such instances. When this person returns, I will disregard any of his previous action. I believe in second, even third and more chances. I am no person who flares up, especially not on the internet. Here more than anywhere else it is much easier to just walk away, take a breather, focus and then engage in civil manner.
I believe on stackexchange there are many features in place, that ensure the peace. And these are of course rare circumstances. I am in general not a fan of drastic measures, but sometimes they might be necessary. Thank god, that in these cases there is a team of moderators in place, so that no person has to decide such measure by her/himself.
Effective communication in the chemical sciences, technology, and education relies on extensive internationally standardized terminology, nomenclature, quantities, units, symbols, and typography. How seriously do you take conformity with these requirements with regard to this site? If applicable, what do you consider to be the roles of the moderators or other users in achieving conformity with the requirements?
As much as possible. In other words: $\mathcal{M}_{ath}\mathrm{J^{a}X}\neq\LaTeX$. There are certain limitations to the site. However, I think there is an excellent meta post, which addresses this already: Should we correct math formatting? As someone with over a thousand edits by now you can see, that I am one who cares for things like that. As a moderator I will continue editing posts, providing examples for nice typesetting. However, I believe this is as much as a community effort, as removing buzzwords from question titles.
What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? If you are currently a moderator, do you believe you've carried out the role effectively?
I like my data nice and tidy. I keep an eye out for questions that can easily be improved by applying proper formatting, increasing searchability of question titles and proper tagging. I spent a decent amount of time flagging redundant or obsolete comments, to make important comments more visible or to remove distraction from the actual content of the question. As a chat regular I am accessible quite often and can be actively engaged in conversations.
I believe communication is very important on this site. We have meta and I am happy to see, that there is much more engagement here than there was a year ago. With a growing site this section will also gain more and more importance. And in turn this should make the site much more easy to moderate.
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?
Unfortunately this is also nothing new to me. I think flags can be dealt with on a case to case basis. In any case, constructive comments are a starting point and warnings in the same form might be the last resort that should be taken public. If a pattern evolves and there are more and more complaints about a single user, other steps have to be taken. I believe there are already mechanisms in place. As I already stated, I am not a fan of drastic measures, but sometimes they seem to be necessary and effective.
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
Since there is a moderator chat room, I believe this is the place to discuss. I think one of the purposes is seeking clarification and voicing concerns. Hopefully in such cases a consensus can be found rendering further actions unnecessary or if not things can be handled accordingly.
I assume these cases are very rare and most of them will be dealt before anything goes wrong. After all we are only humans and making mistakes is a common trait.
And we are finally done. If you read it all the way through to the end, thank you very much for your attention. If you feel like there is room for improvement, please leave a comment or find me in chat. If you choose the latter option, be prepared to follow rule #1.
