In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected [from an earlier thread](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/4818/2014-moderator-election-qa-question-collection) have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. It was decided that we would take the top 9 questions as submitted by the community, plus 2 pre-set questions from us, for a total of 11 questions.

As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just [copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/revisions/e912c815-3e48-479f-b201-35c653c59b3b/view-source).

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page. 

Good luck to all of the candidates!

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> I'd be interested to hear how candidates feel about the existence of [English Language Learners](http://ell.stackexchange.com), and whether/how they intend to preserve/promote the distinct identities of the two sites.



> 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? 



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



> A lot of [tag:single-word-requests] questions get asked. Many users find that these undermine the quality of the site. What is your stance on single word requests?



> How can we distinguish native from non-native participants? [Should we?](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/a/4828/)



> How do you resolve differences of opinion between yourself and the general community? For example, if you have strong opinions about what questions should remain open or closed but there is a significant portion of the community that disagrees, what would you do about it? Would you ever override the community opinion and act as you think is best? Would you ever defer to the community entirely?



> Do you believe EL&U is sufficiently welcoming and friendly to new users? If not, what do you think should be done to change that?



> How much of "English Language and Usage" is, or should be, opinions? Whose opinions?



> Will you be available in chat for questions related to the site? What topics are you willing or not willing to discuss?



> What is the most convincing reason we shouldn't make you a moderator?



> How do you feel about a rule of needing two mods to agree before closing a question as being duplicate, off-topic, or POB? Should such a rule be a "soft" rule or strict? All too often this decision appears to be unilateral, and at times, taken in haste. The consensus of two mods would guarantee greater objectivity and hopefully, limit those instances where a question is put on hold based on a question's title and not on its content.