One of my most oft-visited sites on the internets is Bicycles Stack Exchange. In fact, I really love the whole Stack Exchange network.

If you’re not familiar with Stack Exchange, all of their sites operate on a Q&A basis. Users ask questions, other users answer. People vote answers up and down based on whether or not they’re useful. Answers with more votes rise to the top of the list, answers with fewer votes get relegated to the bottom. It’s really a brilliantly elegant alternative to the traditional method of asking on a forum, and then sift through the dozens of posts that don’t really answer the question until you find that one golden gem that does.

As people use the site, they build up various privileges. There is a review queue built into the site that people can access as they gain certain privileges. Since getting on the site, I have been incredibly active in reviewing posts, notifying users and moderators of things that don’t fit (like non-answers). Bicycles SE is one of the smaller sites and really needs people to review things in order to keep the site running smoothly.

There are also moderators who have sort of superuser privileges. Moderators are elected by the community in periodic elections. When I recently heard that a moderator position had opened up and that there would be an election, I cast in my nomination.

The little diamond is for moderators.

I’m happy to announce that I won.

I have a lot of faith in the Stack Exchange network overall, and a personal interest in Bicycles SE in particular. I’m incredibly excited to be able to give back to a community that I so thoroughly enjoy being a part of.