Now that we've graduated out of Beta, there will be an election some time in 2022 or 2023. We had an election very recently about 1.5 years ago (this may not seem recent to some people, since many organizations in this world have annual elections, but on SE elections happen early in Beta, then at graduation, at which point the winners become permanent moderators except if they step down or they get removed). Therefore it might be a good idea for us to ask for our election to take place in the later end of the cycle (for example in 2023). I say this not only because the last election was quite recent by SE standards, but also because:
- The current team appears to have done their job with an extraordinary lack of complaints against them, and with our site making such good progress and having such good momentum right now, it doesn't seem like the right time for drastic changes just yet,
- We are the newest site out of all 58 sites that just graduated (most of them having lived in Beta for several hundred percent longer than us), so we are still accumulating our user base and may have a lot more good candidates in the future. In the below list of users from #6 to #16 in rep for 2021, we have new users like wzkchem5 and PBH who were not ranked at all in 2020 and two users who have moved up +208 and +240 since 2020 (these and many other excellent new users, were not even here yet when the first election took place, which is one of the unfortunate things about the fact that Beta elections are always held very early in the site's lifetime, when the userbase might not reflect the eventual site population):
In 2022 and 2023 we will have more new users, and will have an even better idea of who the best emerging (or previously existing) candidates are.
- Now that we've graduated, I'm planning to advertise this site quite a lot in a large number of places, and in much bigger ways than before. We'll see a jump in users, especially senior academics/professors, in 2022. This may even change the dynamics of the site a bit. In 2023, we'll be in a better position to make our first "permanent appointments".
As always, I'd appreciate other people's feedback on this idea too!