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I understand that mod terms are for life. However, I find it odd that Mi.Yodeya has had the second least recent elections of any site on StackExchange. We have not held moderator elections since 2012. The majority of StackExchange sites have held moderator elections as recently as 2015, with only 5 out of 55 sites having their last election longer ago than 2013.

(Mi.Yodeya is one of these five; the other four are Physics, Android Enthusiasts, Tex-Latex and Drupal Answers. Of these, only Tex-Latex had their last election longer ago than we did.)

I haven't been able to find any official Stackexchange policy stipulating a frequency for elections. But if other sites can manage to have them regularly, why don't we?

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    MY's second election is now happening in January 2017.
    – Double AA Mod
    Jan 17, 2017 at 5:25

1 Answer 1

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Elections are typically triggered by one of two things:

  1. Graduation out of Beta

  2. The site grows to the point that it requires more attention than the existing moderation team can offer.

Each of these decisions are made by Stack Exchange staff, presumably with input from the community. There is no scheduled frequency.

It has been a while since Mi Yodeya graduated, and we have not yet, since then, reached a point at which we need more moderators.

Mi Yodeya moderator DoubleAA added:

For what it's worth, SE staff does check in with the mods regularly to see if we are feeling overwhelmed and need more hands on deck. We've considered it a few times but haven't ever actually gone through with it yet. (I don't think this is so unusual for smaller sites. Most smaller sites I think have elections when a current mod gets tired and steps down, I think.)

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    @IsaacMoses Thanks. I was under the impression, though, from reading various StackExchange sites, that communities chose when to hold elections themselves. Is this definitely wrong?
    – SAH
    Dec 10, 2015 at 16:48
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    @SAH, from what I understand, from the answer to the question you linked, and from this post on MSE, elections are typically initiated as a result of conversations between site moderators and Stack Exchange staff.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Dec 10, 2015 at 16:55
  • @IsaacMoses Who is expected to initiate those conversations?
    – SAH
    Dec 11, 2015 at 14:15
  • @DoubleAA Does this mean we are the second slowest-growing site on .SE?
    – SAH
    Dec 11, 2015 at 14:16
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    @SAH Or that we have amazingly resilient and effective moderators :)
    – Double AA Mod
    Dec 11, 2015 at 14:18
  • @SAH, apparently, they take place routinely on an annual basis.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Dec 11, 2015 at 14:37
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    @SAH, I don't know how our growth rate compares with those of other SE sites, but it is, thank God, healthy. We'll always be one of the smaller SE sites, thanks to the relatively small population in the world of experts on Judaism who are also interested in Internet Q&A in English.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Dec 11, 2015 at 14:45
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    Isasc: FYI, Our current guidance is that Moderator elections should be requested by Moderator staff or the community. The Community Team typically does not patrol looking for the need of elections. If an event would likely warrant an election (e.g. a graduation or resignation), we'll initiate it, but triggering a routine election typically comes from the community itself.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Dec 14, 2015 at 17:53

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