2015 Moderator Election

I'm a programmer from Germany who discovered cryptography a couple of years ago. I've been active on crypto.se for 3 years, not only by posting, but also by editing, reviewing and flagging.

I've been active in a number of online communities over the years. I administrated a small German game forum, where I learned the hard way, that while listening to the community is nice, but shouldn't lead to being a pushover. As non moderating staff on a large gaming forum, I learned the value of transparent moderation, especially when faced with a controversial decision.

I'm frequently available on the stackexchange chat. This helps when coordination migrations with other sites and makes it easy to contact me with questions or requests.

I have been a moderator on Crypto for a few years now. As crypto goes through the graduation process, I hope to be able to make the transition as smooth as possible. That is why I am running for moderator at this time.

As my user profile says, I'm not really a cryptographer — I just play one on the Internet. :) In real life, I'm a graduate student still trying to scrape together a PhD thesis on mathematical biology, while also looking for an IT job to pay the bills and running summer camps for kids on the side.

I've long been interested in cryptography from an amateur perspective, and have picked up a few bits over the years from those wiser and better read than I am. Before joining this site, I used to hang out at sci.crypt on Usenet, a forum that I often found both fascinating and frustrating in its lack of moderation (often, in every sense of the word).

As a moderator, I'd hope to be a calm voice of, if not reason, then at least common sense. I ran in last year's moderator election on Math.SE, but didn't quite make it. (I'm not disappointed in the results, though, since we did get three excellent new mods.) While I'm active on a lot of SE sites, I do think of Crypto.SE as my "home site", and, now that we're finally graduating (sort of), I'd be remiss if I didn't step up to the task here.

I've been an active member of this site for a couple years now. My substantive activity on this site took a steep dive while I was working on my thesis, but now that it is complete, I'm interested in diving back into the community.

I've moderated several online communities over the years, ranging from several-hundred-thousand users to a dozen. I know how to handle the typical challenges of moderation - selective use of authority and rational mediation of user conflicts.

I have a vested interest in this community. It is where I went from "complete novice" to "journeyman cryptographer," a trip that hasn't been easy. In my opinion, this site is fantastic online resource for those studying cryptography - and the site self-evaluations back this up. I want this site to continue to enjoy continued excellence.

There are challenges to this site's topic - conspirators who've "broken RSA" spamming questions, hundreds of "crack the code" questions, and so on. As the site grows, so too will the torrent of unending crypto-site-killing questions. I want to be part of the defense and curation of Crypto.SE. It's the least I can do to repay our excellent userbase.

I´ve been hugging Crypto.SE ever since I first stumbled upon it. Some might remember me as the one who first contributed some visuals to promote Crypto.SE (lnk & lnk). Others told me they discovered Crypto.SE via one of my questions I pushed out via twitter.

As Crypto.SE grew, I grew with it… and while I certainly enjoyed some “constructive discussions” about cryptography and cryptanalysis, I was also able to learn about the nuts and bolts of SE community moderation by watching and interacting with existing moderators (thanks again for all the related feedback btw – you know who you are).

TL;DR: I´ld be honoured to be given the chance to contribute my humble services. I don´t want to become a captain – I would just like to be one of the stewards who makes your stay at Crypto.SE as comfortable as possible. Maybe the fact I´m the only candidate with 8/8 moderation badges is able to speak for itself…