It's been nearly three years since I started as pro-tem moderator on this fabulous site, and I think it's time for me to step aside. The job of a pro-tem is supposed to be:
- ...a temporary, short-term appointment...
- ...provisional [...] until the community holds formal elections after the Beta period...
Because we've been in beta for such a long time, my role has extended far longer than the post was originally intended to last and possibly longer than any other site has ever been in beta? That's not an issue for elected moderators but pro-tems are appointed and aren't necessarily the people the community would chose to moderate.
I don't know how long we have left in beta. We're obviously making progress, but I think it may be a while before we have enough active members to make an election meaningful. In the meantime I think someone else from the community should be given the privilege of "Judiciously limiting your use of moderator powers to selectively prune and guide the community".
Meanwhile I get a chance to re-join the other great team of 18 23 BH.SE "moderators": the active users of the site. I've really appreciated the effort you've all put in editing, flagging, thrashing out site direction on meta and so on, and I hope I'm half as helpful as you are to the mods and the site.
It's been a pleasure working alongside Caleb and Dan recently, and I'm sure it'll continue to be a pleasure working with those two excellent moderators and friends, from the other side of the flag curtain :) It was also a pleasure working with Ray and Richard during their time and especially with Jon: he moved on to work with the Stack Exchange Community Team, but I believe he will always have a special interest in this site and our community. Thank you all very much.
tl:dr;
- Many thanks for putting up with me this long!
- Please support and encourage whoever is appointed pro-tem next.
