Additional Moderators Needed

Question

THE REPLACEMENT HAS BEEN PICKED, AND THE ORIGINAL META ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE PRO-TEM SELECTION HAS BEEN UPDATED
Thanks to all that volunteered to take the position.

Ideally Moderators are elected by the community, but until this site reaches a critical mass to hold an election, I need to appoint one provisional Moderator to help moderate this site.

We recently had a moderator step down from this site. As discussed in this Meta post, just about the only criterion remaining to keep a site open is having enough users (three minimum) willing to step up to moderate it.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Please nominate some folks you might like to see become the provisional moderators for this site. Your input will provide some valuable support to help us make our selection. You can read more about the process here: Moderators Pro Tempore.

The Nomination Process:

• Nominate a user by adding an 'answer' below. Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity. I added a short template (below) to help you with that process.

• Self nominations are encouraged. This is a volunteer activity, so users should not feel obligated to accept these positions. A self nomination is simply a way to say, "I am very much interested in this, so let my record speak for itself."

• Nominations can include links to other activities: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, or any relevant thoughts/links that may help us make an informed decision.

• The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer (not commenting) to say they accept. Optionally, nominees are encouraged to write a bit about themselves following the nomination. You can use the --- markup to separate the nominee's commentary from the original nomination. See the example below.

Here is what we'll be looking for in a Moderator candidate:

We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community's development; members who:

• Have been consistently active in the site's activities;

• Show an interest in their meta's community-building activities;

• Leads by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write;

• Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.

Here is an example nomination entry. You can copy-and-paste from the format below:

<h2>[username](<main profile link>) </h2>

<h2>[Meta Profile](<meta profile link>) </h2>

Notes:

<why you feel nominee would be a useful addition to the pro tem choices>

---

^{(this section is edited in by the nominee)}

I accept/decline this nomination

I am name/age/location/fun fact/all optional. I live in location, so I am 
generally active on this site from <time> to <time>. Some other things you may 
want to know about me are…

etc.

Answer 1

SeanDuggan

Meta Profile

Notes:

SeanDuggan is a consistently active, positive member of both the regular and meta sites. He is widely accepting of others' ideas and plays well with others.

---

I accept this nomination

I am Sean Duggan, age 38, born in Ashland, KY but currently living in Pittsburgh, PA. I live in an EST timezone, where I am generally active on this site from 9 AM to 9 PM (not constantly, of course, because I work a full-time job).

Frankly, I am not a martial arts master. The longest I've studied continuously is four years in the Chuck Norris Tang Soo Do (later Chun Kuk Do) system in middle school and high school where I failed my black belt test twice and was told that my contract was no longer valid despite initially promising me my black belt (yes, I know, hallmark of a McDojo, although I give them credit that they indeed did not award me my black belt). However, I've had a lifelong fascination with martial arts since I found a handful of books in our local library, and I've dabbled in Tae Kwan Do, Shotokan Karate, Aikido, Doce Pares Escrima, SCA-style fencing (rapier formally although I've been doing "boffer" fights since childhood), Jujitsu, Kenjutsu, and Capoeira. I'm currently semi-actively pursuing Kenjutsu through classes at work, and Angola Capoeira with a few fellow capoeiristras in the Pittsburgh area.

You might ask, without a black belt in any style, what sort of qualifications do I bring? Well, avoiding false humility, I'm good with Google, and my background as an engineer means that I'm pretty decent at sifting through the data in an objective manner.

As mattm has stated, I do tend to be accepting of other ideas, possibly occasionally to an extreme. While I try to avoid being one of those people who's so open-minded that his brains are falling out, I do want to believe, as the saying goes. I'm not willing to accept claims without evidence, but I do believe that there is more out there than we know now, and that people with extraordinary claims are sometimes on to something. And frankly, even when they're not, it's possible to be diplomatic in bursting their bubble.

As a side note to this, I find people claiming MMA styles as being the pinnacle of martial arts because they work in the Octagon as ridiculous as people claiming their ancient style is the pinnacle because it works in the dojo against students that train with them. Martial arts are practiced for many different reasons, only some of which are actual fighting, and in every situation, from street fights to fighting rings to a formal sparring match, there are rules and circumstances that determine efficacy. The primary advantage that things like amateur wrestling, boxing, and MMA have are that they put people in situation where they do have to test their techniques "in the wild", and where they learn how to react to actually getting hit.

Thank you for your attention. :)

Answer 2

mattm

Meta Profile

---

I am willing to moderate.

I live in the Eastern US, and am on the site most days.

I am a serious student of martial arts but do not claim any mastery. In the past, I have practiced:

• wrestling
• uechi ryu karate
• wushu
• taiji quan

I continue to practice:

• judo
• bagua

I have seen enough to:

1. Think you can learn new things from quite unexpected places.
2. Understand that people think about the same concepts in completely different ways.

I subscribe to the idea that the usefulness of a StackExchange site is in making sure that good material is easily visible, and not in strictly policing every question and answer. The martial arts site requires some moderation to clean up questions about how to learn martial arts solely through self-training over the internet, but I think the greatest current challenge for this site is in expanding the user base and not in its moderation.