1. Lauda should be removed from the options because he is clearly not qualified to be a global moderator, as he lacks the ability to maintain even the appearance of neutrality by leaving multiple negative trust ratings against people who his disagrees with, as well as his severe lack of maturity.
Trust and maturity are (mostly) irrelevant to a person's moderation ability. Maturity is also a subjective assessment; what you think as immature I may think as not.
2. The criteria for choosing a global mod should not be who wins a vote (which are virtually meaningless due to the potential for alts), it should be based on who is qualified.....in other words who has the experience in moderating the forum (or other forums). Some of the main reasons why someone will become a non-local board moderator are that someone makes a lot of accurate reports, has a good understanding of the rules, and mostly maintain neutrality in disputes -- the criteria for who becomes a local moderator appears to be much more lenient. After someone has proven themselves to be a competent patroller, they should take responsibility for a few sections, then eventually have responsibility for major sections (including the marketplace and related subs, bitcoin discussion and the altcoin sections) -- until someone has successfully moderated one or more major sections for a "decent" amount of time, they probably should not be considered for a global moderator position for the most part.
Based upon the above objective criteria, both Lauda and Mitchell are qualified. Both are patrollers (IIRC) and both moderate multiple sections; Lauda moderates croatian and speculation and Mitchell moderates Beginners & Help and Project Development. Both have also had their positions for a decent amount of time.
However the candidates for this election were chosen based upon response to my PM and moderation activity during the past month regardless of time as moderator and sections moderated.
Other things that may be considered when deciding who to promote, would include how many reports are 'ignored' how accurately are reports handled, among potentially other things. Many moderators in general are not very active with their "moderator" account in posting in order to avoid moderator harassment -- I do not think how 'active' someone is in posting should be a considered in deciding who should become a global mod, although I would not say that being very active should disqualify someone.
Indeed. Posting activity was not the only criteria for activity; moderation activity was also considered. I only included those who had moderation activity in the past month (and they were the only ones who responded anyways). This data is based upon mod payment data which theymos posts in the Staff Forum. Those who get paid are active in moderation activities.
3. I am not sure the problem is that we do not have enough global moderators, the problem may be a policy issue. Some policies have been somewhat recently implemented, that should, over time reduce the quantity of low quality posts, for example
this one banning threads whose only response can be a low quality post in 'off-topic',
this one banning low value threads in 'bitcoin discussion', and
this policy of blacklisting certain signatures whose campaign operators allow too high a level of low quality of posts.
Yes, additional policy would help, but with additional policy there also needs to be additional enforcement. IMO enforcement is currently lacking.