1. 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?

Historically, this site has been a lightning rod for arguments and debates. It's not hard to keep the questions and answers focused to mitigate that, and users are more than free to argue and debate in chat with willing participants. Comments in general are far harder to moderate, and because of this have far more potential for abuse when things get heated. As such, I take a very hard line against comments that aren't focused on improving the post they're on, and if a user is consistently engaging in arguments or outright abusive comments, they will be warned and potentially suspended regardless of the quality of their content otherwise.

2. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

I will usually respect the judgement of the other mods and not reverse their actions unless it's something particularly egregious. If I do feel strongly that it shouldn't have been actioned, I would likely discuss it with them in the moderator chat to understand their motivation, and try to convince them to reverse the action themselves rather than overrule their decision.

3. We attract a lot of low-quality questions from users with little to no expertise in Islamic topics, which can often drown out questions on more advanced topics. The community has a wide array of privilege-based tools (e.g. voting, editing) to curate the site and maintain a standard of quality. How important do you feel the moderators' role is in this process?

Ideally, the moderator's role here should be minimal. The community has all the tools necessary to handle most of these sorts of questions, particularly by being able to upvote interesting questions while downvoting uninteresting ones. The voting reflects the community's desire for these questions, and if the community at large doesn't dislike these questions enough to downvote them I don't feel the moderator's own will should be imposed. Unless it's clearly detrimental to the site, or the situation is such that community voting cannot handle it alone, I would prefer to let the community handle it themselves.

4. As a pluralistic site, Islam.SE is meant to be both welcoming and useful for questions on all denominations of Islam. How well do you believe it has accomplished this so far and what do you feel could be done to improve the experience of under-represented and less mainstream users?

I still worry that our site comes off as too "Sunni-centric"; even when most of our users are accommodating (which I believe is the case), I reckon non-Sunni users wouldn't be all that confident that they can come here for honest answers to their questions, so much as they would come in expecting an argument or looking for a fight.

As a moderator, I'm not sure there's anything I can really do about that except be patient while taking a hard line against any behaviour that is likely to drive away what few non-mainstream users we have.

5. Under which condition would you delete or hide a question? An answer? A comment?

• Questions: As a moderator, I'll rarely delete questions myself unless they're consistently attracting a large amount of flags (i.e. offensive comments or bad answers) or I feel they're posted in bad faith. If I feel there's room to improve a question to make it constructive (which is almost always the case), I'll either close it so someone can edit the question appropriately, assuming I don't take the time to do so myself.

• Answers: Outside of plagiarism/copy-paste/link-only answers, or obvious Not-An-Answers which completely misread/ignore the question asked, I'll rarely delete an answer if it looks like an honest attempt to answer the question.

• Comments: For the most part, if they're not directly helpful toward improving the post they're on, I'm usually pretty aggressive with pruning comments:

  • If they devolve into arguments

  • If they look likely to devolve into arguments

  • If they're flagged for pretty much any reason

  • If they're attempting to answer the question instead of posting an answer

  • If there's just so many on a post that any useful comments are drowned out in noise

  • If they're nitpicking tangential points that don't actually matter for answering the question

  • If they're too chatty

This is of course not counting the obvious cases of offensive or garbage posts, which get purged as soon as I see them.

6. As a moderator, your actions and behaviour will reflect not only the Islam.SE community, but the Stack Exchange network as a whole: this will likely involve endorsing and enforcing policies that you may disagree with personally. How do you feel about that? Does it matter if the point of contention stems from your religious beliefs rather than just a personal conviction?

I am very careful not to let my personal biases affect my responsibilities as a moderator. I believe that following and enforcing site/network policies is only a reflection of the beliefs of the site or network respectively, and with very few exceptions I do not believe following and enforcing them would in any way compromise my own beliefs.

7. From time to time we have a huge activity of people who certainly have good intentions, but want to preach the "truth". What do you think is the best way to handle with such people and situations?

I feel the best way to handle this is to keep questions tightly focused on finding clear, objective facts, rather than on subjective opinions; on being descriptive of how things are rather than proscriptive of how things should be. That makes it easier to ensure answers stick to answering the question asked rather than inserting their own opinions or tangents.

8. As this site is pluralistic, sooner or later you - as one of the moderators- or the community will close a question. However the reaction on this closure might be a meta post complaining about your "anti pluralistic" behavior (direct reference to moderator "X"). How would you react? Or Will you react on such a post? If yes under what circumstances?

In my experience, such meta posts aren't worth engaging in since they're mostly just rants letting off steam rather than actual discussions looking for solutions. I may involve myself if there's factually incorrect information being presented that needs to be clarified, but in most such cases I've already explained my actions elsewhere (i.e. in a comment on the post) and being drawn into an argument by someone who rejects that explanation just isn't constructive.

9. Islam Chat and Islam Meta are both valuable tools for gauging the needs and priorities of the community, but the community has not been particularly inclined to take advantage of them. As a moderator, how crucial would you consider this sort of community engagement and what, if anything, do you feel should be done to improve it?

I am rather disappointed at how little Meta activity the site has, since it suggests that the community at large really doesn't care enough about the site to discuss or define policy. It does make the job of moderation harder since we have to rely on our own subjective and possibly biased opinions as to what does or does not need to be actioned.

10. Many low quality question posts come either from Muslims with a bad basis in their religion or from non-Muslims who are simply curious about something. Would you make a difference between low-quality questions on a specific basis? For example the religious background?

Except for cases where a question is asked in bad faith, I wouldn't want the asker's prior knowledge, or lack thereof, to influence how the the question itself is accepted. In many cases, a clearly defined question asked by someone with a bad basis in their religion can, or at least should, be easily answered and act as a duplicate target for future users with the same question. If a question is not clearly defined, it should be closed until it is edited with an improved focus; again, it should not matter whether the questionasker has a firm knowledge in their religion, just that they are able to ask a clear answerable question.

1. 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?

A user generating valuable answers in indeed an important part of our community. There might be a chance that the arguments are because of some misunderstanding. My first goal will be to find the cause of the continuous flags and then analyse the situation.

If that doesn't rectify the situation, then a dialogue needs to be arranged between the relevant parties, in the presence of one or more mods. Based on my experience, this solves the problem most of the time.

The last option is to discipline the person causing the issue. I doubt that it has ever happened in our community.

2. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

I consider that all mods are part of a single team and such scenarios are very unlikely. In case it happens, the mods can go to the private chat room where I would discuss the matter with the other mod. A consensus can easily be reached or in the worst case, majority wins.

3. We attract a lot of low-quality questions from users with little to no expertise in Islamic topics, which can often drown out questions on more advanced topics. The community has a wide array of privilege-based tools (e.g. voting, editing) to curate the site and maintain a standard of quality. How important do you feel the moderators' role is in this process?

There are issues which fall under spam, offensive or completely unrelated. There is no question about these ones to be smashed with the mod hammer as our community already agrees on the conclusion.

Regarding the other types which require some discussion, I will let the discussion to occur. If there is a general level consensus in the direction where most people are tending towards, then mod action is not necessarily against the community's decision. If that is not the case, then a dialogue needs to happen to reach a conclusion.

4. As a pluralistic site, Islam.SE is meant to be both welcoming and useful for questions on all denominations of Islam. How well do you believe it has accomplished this so far and what do you feel could be done to improve the experience of under-represented and less mainstream users?

Respecting others is one of the key characteristics in life, and especially in an online forum like this. With an international audience, I can face different views about everything in life and if someone is not in agreement with me, does not mean that I should not respect it.

5. Under which condition would you delete or hide a question? An answer? A comment?

Question

If something is asked again and again or does not confer with the protocol of this forum.

Answer

If the answer does not answer the question, or asks another question.

Comment

Comments are temporary. If they are not asking for clarification or providing something useful, they are gone.

6. As a moderator, your actions and behaviour will reflect not only the Islam.SE community, but the Stack Exchange network as a whole: this will likely involve endorsing and enforcing policies that you may disagree with personally. How do you feel about that? Does it matter if the point of contention stems from your religious beliefs rather than just a personal conviction?

I don't see much of a gap here. Religious believes are one thing and abiding by the rules of a forum is another.

7. From time to time we have a huge activity of people who certainly have good intentions, but want to preach the "truth". What do you think is the best way to handle with such people and situations?

If such behavior gets out of control, then this can be discussed in a private chat room. If nothing else works, then warning and/or suspension can be issued.

8. As this site is pluralistic, sooner or later you - as one of the moderators- or the community will close a question. However the reaction on this closure might be a meta post complaining about your "anti pluralistic" behavior (direct reference to moderator "X"). How would you react? Or Will you react on such a post? If yes under what circumstances?

Having a discussion about such issues often can resolve issues. If there is already a meta post, it is an excellent and correct way to handle these conflicts.

9. Islam Chat and Islam Meta are both valuable tools for gauging the needs and priorities of the community, but the community has not been particularly inclined to take advantage of them. As a moderator, how crucial would you consider this sort of community engagement and what, if anything, do you feel should be done to improve it?

The community can be encourged to come to chat and participate more. Once people see that chat is active, it will become more and more helpful.

10. Many low quality question posts come either from Muslims with a bad basis in their religion or from non-Muslims who are simply curious about something. Would you make a difference between low-quality questions on a specific basis? For example the religious background?

No. I do not want to jump to the conclusion that a particular question has some malicious intent, unless that has become clearly evident.

1. 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?

In short, I would try my best to figure out the reason for the argument and I would try my best to convince him/her by describing the virtue of forgiveness in Islam.

2. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

As I like to learn from people, I would discuss my view with him and also tell him to discuss his view with me. Then the rest is on the ' 'Aql '

3. We attract a lot of low-quality questions from users with little to no expertise in Islamic topics, which can often drown out questions on more advanced topics. The community has a wide array of privilege-based tools (e.g. voting, editing) to curate the site and maintain a standard of quality. How important do you feel the moderators' role is in this process?

Moderators' role is very important here. For a responsible person, Responsibility comes with commitment and faith. So, moderators' efforts would be consistent. Moderators' one action might reduce a thousand actions of general people.

4. As a pluralistic site, Islam.SE is meant to be both welcoming and useful for questions on all denominations of Islam. How well do you believe it has accomplished this so far and what do you feel could be done to improve the experience of under-represented and less mainstream users?

In my opinion, it is far away to cover up all denominations of Islam. But if reference-based answers are more and more highlighted then they would gain positive popularity. Besides, I think tags should be initiated for answers too. So that answerer could provide more information like which view s/he belongs to, which denomination follows this, etc.

5. Under which condition would you delete or hide a question? An answer? A comment?

First of all, if it violates the community rule, I would compel to take a hard decision. Secondly, if the question's intention is to break the unity of the ummah.

6. As a moderator, your actions and behaviour will reflect not only the Islam.SE community, but the Stack Exchange network as a whole: this will likely involve endorsing and enforcing policies that you may disagree with personally. How do you feel about that? Does it matter if the point of contention stems from your religious beliefs rather than just a personal conviction?

Patience is the virtue that is stated in the Quran. Bigotry is always bad for the community. So, it does not align with me. Rather I would choose to go with generosity.

7. From time to time we have a huge activity of people who certainly have good intentions, but want to preach the "truth". What do you think is the best way to handle with such people and situations?

I would try my best to convince him/her that this is not the right place to do so. If it does not work, then I would take harder decisions gradually to keep the community clean.

8. As this site is pluralistic, sooner or later you - as one of the moderators- or the community will close a question. However the reaction on this closure might be a meta post complaining about your "anti pluralistic" behavior (direct reference to moderator "X"). How would you react? Or Will you react on such a post? If yes under what circumstances?

To mitigate the problem, I would try my best to directly discuss my point of view. If people and/or other mods tell that I am wrong, then I would respect their decision.

9. Islam Chat and Islam Meta are both valuable tools for gauging the needs and priorities of the community, but the community has not been particularly inclined to take advantage of them. As a moderator, how crucial would you consider this sort of community engagement and what, if anything, do you feel should be done to improve it?

If the chat does not remain lively, it seems people are not engaging. In my opinion, Islam.SE is now in its growing period. At this time, it is better to engage people. When the community would be really large, then we should shrink those facilities.

10. Many low quality question posts come either from Muslims with a bad basis in their religion or from non-Muslims who are simply curious about something. Would you make a difference between low-quality questions on a specific basis? For example the religious background?

I might suggest him to do the necessary study. But no, I would not look at a different view.

At last sorry for the short answers.

1. 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?

On a site where various followers of a religion and other people express their views on that religion, it is hard to expect arguments and debates not to arise.

Nevertheless, it is usually not difficult to process and focus questions and answers in such a way that such debates are alleviated.

Therefore, I see it as a first step to provide such posts with a comment. In it I would put on wound or point out the problematic and the debates do not belong in our main page but are continued genre in the chat.

As a next step, I would see a revision of the posts in case the user is not cooperative. Further steps such as warnings etc. would then follow.

It is important here as a moderator not to let yourself be led into a debate, among other things because comments are very difficult to moderate and often misused.

Comments that do not directly improve the post will be handled depending on the progress and user behavior, possibly by means of a note, deletion with reference that the page should not be "used for debates".

The quality of the users' contributions only plays a minor role here, because their behavior should adapt to the stackexchange policy.

I know from my own experience that although one likes to skim the site definition quickly and the rules can only be worked out over time and sometimes through 1 or 2 "clashes" with the moderators ;)

2. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

Before I take action, I always contact my moderator colleagues in the moderator chat and question the background, because sometimes they are not visible to me.

If afterwards I come to the conclusion that my first impression is still the same, I try to convince my colleague of my point of view and hope that he will reverse his action himself,

otherwise I will inform him before I possibly do this myself would.

I would of course prefer if the community would do this with its resources in this case.

3. We attract a lot of low-quality questions from users with little to no expertise in Islamic topics, which can often drown out questions on more advanced topics. The community has a wide array of privilege-based tools (e.g. voting, editing) to curate the site and maintain a standard of quality. How important do you feel the moderators' role is in this process?

Stackexchange is a community moderated page, therefore -in the given cases- I see the moderator role in the background. A moderator has to intervene where "normal users" cannot and that should not be the case here as a rule, since the community has enough tools and options available: For example through flags and their voting behavior, both of which are a reflection of the desire of the community.

As a moderator, I want to hold back as much as possible and only intervene if it harms the site, e.g. in the case of spam and inappropriate content, I think it is important to proceed quickly.

4. As a pluralistic site, Islam.SE is meant to be both welcoming and useful for questions on all denominations of Islam. How well do you believe it has accomplished this so far and what do you feel could be done to improve the experience of under-represented and less mainstream users?

Respecting the stackexchange site policy is an important approach. Because it expects us as users and communities to respect people of other faiths or denominations. Thus, the framework conditions are already set. As a moderator, I can mainly refer to these references and follow them as a role model. For this purpose, questions or general posts from all users must be processed with the necessary respect and seriousness, even if you cannot answer them (up-vote, or comment, here again I can only set a good example). As a rule, I try to welcome every new user to the site - as long as I am one of the first to read their posts - and I would like to invite all users to do so at this point. A "warm welcome" is always well received!

In general I guess we are doing fine with this, but there is clearly room for improvement.

5. Under which condition would you delete or hide a question? An answer? A comment?

I would delete

• Comments: If they generally are of no further use, for example not meant for clarification or improvement, if they end up in discussions and debates (see my answer on question1.). Further in case that they are rude/abusive/spam etc.

• Answers: Honestly speaking for both answers and questions I tend to avoid deleting them and leave it for the community to down-vote them until they are deleted by the system. An exception for both (answers and questions) would be the case of spam and inappropriate content as mentioned in my answer for question 3. and specifically for answers the case of a warned user who is constantly posting copy-pastes or link only answers or answers who miss the topic of the question entirely.

• Questions: A specific exception for questions would be the case of a duplicate (of the same user) question. However my approach is usually asking the user to do it himself first.

6. As a moderator, your actions and behaviour will reflect not only the Islam.SE community, but the Stack Exchange network as a whole: this will likely involve endorsing and enforcing policies that you may disagree with personally. How do you feel about that? Does it matter if the point of contention stems from your religious beliefs rather than just a personal conviction?

Generally this is not a big deal, as the policies of stackexchange are compatible and in agreemt with religious beliefs. Of course sometimes as a Muslim one wants to help people looking for advice or in a desprate situation who may ask an incompatible question, but in either way there's always the option to rephrase a question in order to make it fit or to leave a -helpful- comment before closing it.

7. From time to time we have a huge activity of people who certainly have good intentions, but want to preach the "truth". What do you think is the best way to handle with such people and situations?

A scholar said the truth is one, but the paths leading to it might be many. Therefore sometimes having such answers could be of benefit for the site especially if other users post a different answer. As a mod I'd have to encourage and leave the site being pluaralistic, but if thenigs go to extrems I might need to act or react in an approriate manner from leaving a nice comment (there are a couple fo meta posts tto which one could refer), to warning, to further actions (repharsing posts, ...,suspension).

8. As this site is pluralistic, sooner or later you - as one of the moderators- or the community will close a question. However the reaction on this closure might be a meta post complaining about your "anti pluralistic" behavior (direct reference to moderator "X"). How would you react? Or Will you react on such a post? If yes under what circumstances?

As in most of the questions here communication is the key: One -moderator or "normal" user- should always leave a short comment explaining why a question was closed or an answer was deleted. However once this message was left one should avoid getting drown into fruitless discussions.

9. Islam Chat and Islam Meta are both valuable tools for gauging the needs and priorities of the community, but the community has not been particularly inclined to take advantage of them. As a moderator, how crucial would you consider this sort of community engagement and what, if anything, do you feel should be done to improve it?

Both the chat room(s) and meta reflect the user activity. Both show that users are interested in the site and want to improve it or know more about it. Therefore one should at least actively give a kind of feedback if possible. It is important to show the community that there's somebody taking their input/questions etc. seriously and encouraging them to keep on doing so to keep the site alive.

10. Many low quality question posts come either from Muslims with a bad basis in their religion or from non-Muslims who are simply curious about something. Would you make a difference between low-quality questions on a specific basis? For example the religious background?

Well one could say a Muslim should know more about his religion, but this would be a bad approach. I must confess I'm not much consistent on this topic, sometimes one has the impression that this question is more important to the questioner even if it looks like he/she did no or a superficial prior research, but nevertheless one likes to leave an answer. However I think some kinds of standards must be defined in our meta. And it is important to let people know that a one liner question sometimes is hardly answerable without more input. The biggest issue however is to not drive out people who might feel affected by a kind of "rejection" of their question.