Metaculus is still growing and hopefully will continue to grow in the coming months. Our moderating team has been doing a stellar job, as we all know. To better absorb coming changes, and because [queuing theory](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/10/21/what-happens-when-you-add-a-new-teller/) is brutal, we've decided it's time to recruit again!

The [last election](/questions/5596/) was already 4 months ago, and it went well, so we'll have another one! The principle is largely the same, but in the spirit of experimentation, we'll change some modalities.

So as not to clog the comment section, please leave feedback in the [Feedback Thread](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6805/2021-spring-equinox-moderator-election/#comment-57451). You can also ask questions to current moderators in [this thread](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6805/2021-spring-equinox-moderator-election/#comment-57452).

# Election Rules

1. Any user who thinks they would make a good Metaculus Community Moderator™, should make a top-level comment below. Please start the comment with the line: "# [username] Candidacy", which should produce a formatted title. Please include a short explanation of your motivations, and what would make you a good mod. (See the [example candidacy](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6805/2021-spring-equinox-moderator-election/#comment-57453).)

2. Other users are encouraged to ask candidates questions in their candidacy thread, and upvote the top-level comment if they want.

3. On 2021-03-16, a list of candidates will be generated by taking all contenders with a score >= 8 on their top-level comment.

4. All eligible Metaculus users will be invited to vote. Only users who were at least level 2 when this post was published will be eligible.

5. We will use approval voting.

6. The voting will stay open a week (until 2021-03-23 23:59:59 UTC), and the results will be published the next day.

7. The best candidate will become a moderator. Any candidate with an approval above 75% will also be elected, up to a maximum of 3 new moderators.

8. Moderators are elected for life, or until they retire.

Important note: Metaculus reserves the right to veto any candidate for any reason. We want these elections to be about and for the community, so we will be **very** careful with this, and sincerely hope we won't need it, now or ever. But we might need it someday, so it's better to establish the rule now.


# About Moderators 

A reminder of who and what Metaculus moderators are, copied from our new [guidelines](https://www.metaculus.com/help/guidelines/#moderators):

Metaculus Community Moderators are committed members of the community who volunteer to help the platform run smoothly. We greatly appreciate their time and talents, and we hope you’ll do the same!

The main responsibilities of Community Moderators include:

1. Providing constructive feedback on user-submitted questions, including asking for revisions when necessary.
2. Accepting community-suggested questions that are ready to go live for forecasting.
3. Mediating discussions about question resolutions.
4. Answering users’ questions about how the platform works, when they arise.

Additionally, Community Moderators can help draw extra attention to bugs, feature requests, or other issues that affect the platform. Community Moderators are appointed democratically, by way of election.