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As a community we have institutional membership of TUG paid for by StackOverflow. (Thanks to StackOverflow for this support and to Stefan Kottwitz for the initial idea!) The membership entitles us to nominate eight people to benefit directly from this, receiving copies of TUGBoat and so on. As in previous years, the aim of this question is to solicit nominations for those places.

In the first stage, I would like to ask for nominations for the places. Nominations should be made by posting an answer here with any reasoning you like, then immediately deleting the answer. In a second stage, I will undelete all of the answers to allow the community to vote: any 'stray' votes before the second phase will be ignored. Nominations can be made by the 'candidate' themselves or you can nominate someone else. In the latter situation the mod team will check that the nominee is happy to appear in the 'ballot'.

There is no restriction on standing in the ballot beyond needing to be a member of TeX-sx as-of this morning (0900 GMT on 2018-01-25). In particular, the aim of the memberships here is to allow TeX knowledge to be disseminated: candidates do not have to have 'strong' TeX knowledge, 'community standing' or similar.

The first phase (nominations) will run until 2200 GMT on 2018-02-03, after which there will be a voting phase. In the event of a tie in votes, the mod team will decide which name goes forward. The mod team may also include additional names if at the end of the voting process there are fewer than eight nominees with positive scores.

The voting phase is open until 2200 GMT on 2018-02-09. Additional nominations may be added during this phase. At the end of this period the top eight names will be passed to the StackOverflow staff. (Note: at the time of writing there are nominations which have not been made 'active' as the nominees have not yet confirmed they are happy to go forward.)

At the end of the voting period, the votes were as follows:

Thus samcarter, ShreevatsaR, Moriambar, Marmot, wipet, Phelype Oleinik, Przemysław Scherwentke and Rmano are elected as our representatives: I'll pass the names to the StackOverflow staff. Congratulations to all!

[1]: Had one vote before formal voting period started [2]: Withdrew at the end of the voting period

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  • 3
    I very support the idea of making those who dealt with the double backslash issue our representatives. They showed a great effort and truly deserve this!
    – yo'
    Feb 6, 2018 at 17:08
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    In case someone does not know: our double backslash heroes are: David Carlisle, Moriambar, barbara beeton and ShreevatsaR data.stackexchange.com/tex/query/685628/…
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Feb 6, 2018 at 17:35
  • @samcarter I believe that David and barbara do not plan to apply :-)
    – yo'
    Feb 7, 2018 at 10:18
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    @yo' :) Too bad, I would have drawn a pineapple pizza duck for DPC
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Feb 7, 2018 at 10:22
  • Thanks everyone! Exciting times lay ahead ;-)
    – user121799
    Feb 11, 2018 at 17:22
  • I am concerned by an overall appearance of bias. There are a number of exceptionally helpful users that were considered; those nominated appear to have contributed a great deal to the community. IMO, this frequency of levity is antithetical to the nomination of those with the greatest contributions. Even if bias was minimized and unconscious biases were borne well in mind, this post as a whole creates a strong perception of bias and dubious conduct. As a fairly new member of this community, I do not doubt these members' merits, but I am perturbed by such carefree awards of monetary value.
    – Coby Viner
    Mar 12, 2018 at 21:19
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    @CobyViner I welcome suggestions for improvements to the process here: each year we've had TUG membership, I've adjusted the approach slightly based on what has worked (or not). In particular, the current two-stage process reflects the fact that a one-stage approach tended to favour whoever was nominated first. At the same time, allowing nominations by third parties reflects the fact that an earlier version of the rules, in which only self-nomination was allowed, appeared to be unpopular and tended to attract very few names. Perhaps open a separate meta thread?
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Mar 13, 2018 at 7:01
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    @CobyViner I think it's important to remember that the primary 'benefit' here is community recognition, which is why the current rules do not impose any particular requirements on the nature of nominees. Copies of TUGboat are welcome but for most people I suspect of marginal 'real' benefit: all TUGboat articles are available for free online after one year.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Mar 13, 2018 at 7:06
  • @CobyViner An election is a popularity vote, no jury decision based on merits, no censoring of content, so we also live with fun stuff or biased posts (to be judged by the reader). At the end, the wise and understanding members will decide.
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Mar 13, 2018 at 9:50
  • @StefanKottwitz Fair enough. I would, however, point out that there is still something to be said for minimizing both the perception of and (unavoidable) implicit biases. In my view, this format is quite antithetical to those objectives. Notwithstanding, I appreciate your engaging on this topic and am cognizant of the particularities of this community, with which I admittedly lack substantive familiarity.
    – Coby Viner
    Mar 13, 2018 at 21:34
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    @CobyViner As I said, I'm happy to consider changes to the process for future votes (assuming they take place), within the constraint that the local mods can only use standard meta posts for such things. I'm reluctant to edit answers after-the-fact to introduce rules which were not in the post at the time it was asked.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Mar 13, 2018 at 21:37
  • @JosephWright Sorry, I meant to largely direct my above reply to you! I appreciate that and I certainly did not mean to suggest that you do so. Your point that this was not the ideal place to discuss this is well-taken.
    – Coby Viner
    Mar 13, 2018 at 21:42
  • @JosephWright This is off-topic, so I will delete it after, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for all your work, especially siunitx. I recently presented it to my (computational genomics) lab and we all widely use it!
    – Coby Viner
    Mar 13, 2018 at 21:44

10 Answers 10

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Hesitantly I nominate myself. As “justification”, I humbly offer the following:

  • Participation on this site: Apart from being one of the early (2-digit user ID!) enthusiastic users from the “closed beta” days, which I think suggests my enthusiasm for TeX and for this site, over the last year I have spent a fair amount of time answering and commenting on this site (quantitatively: about 100 answers in 2017), including some unusual answers. Mostly I like to explain things (whatever little I know) and share knowledge, which I believe aligns with one of the goals mentioned.

  • Other contribution to this site: For the double-backslash issue where StackExchange had corrupted thousands of posts, I wrote and shared a script, using which I fixed over 1000 posts and further 1000+ by others (David Carlisle and Moriambar). I didn't receive any swag for it either. :-)

  • I'd really benefit from the TUG membership. Mostly I'd like to read TUGboat as soon as possible. :-) At this time last year, I'd have said my interest in TeX history meant I was reading mainly the older issues of TUGboat, which are freely available. But right now there at least three articles in the current issue that I'd really love to read. Similarly in the issue before that. And future issues, I imagine.

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(image borrowed from https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/391184/36296)

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  • @ShreevatsaR Paulo is the artist behind the dinosaur - all praise should be directed to him.
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Feb 5, 2018 at 22:47
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I (Christian Hupfer) nominate samcarter for her outstanding support regarding TikZ and beamer related questions (and other topics as well, of course) here on TeX.SE (but grossly unfortunately underrated, being a user with the most zero votes answers most likely :-( ) and for her package tikzducks (Fortunately Duck Vader is not missing any longer :-) )

@samcarter speaking: It is a great honour to be nominated! I have been elected as representative the past two years and although I'd love to continue I would encourage everybody to first vote for new nominees, please!

Did someone complain about a missing Duck Vader?

The TikZ force is strong in her...

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I'd like to nominate myself because (a) Paulo Cereda suggested it, (b) I really like this community and (c) marmots are underrepresented.

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    Note: this answer had a +1 score at the start of voting, which the moderator team may choose to omit when deciding on the final positions
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Feb 2, 2018 at 22:27
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I'd like to nominate Moriambar for his significant effort to mend the \\ bug.

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I'd like to nominate myself because I have spent a lot of time with tex.stackexchange and with explanation that TeX is not equal to LaTeX.

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    Who claims that TeX and LaTeX are the same, however? ;-)
    – user31729
    Feb 3, 2018 at 17:43
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I nominate @Phelype Oleinik

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(approval by the nominee: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/42487117#42487117)

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I nominate @CarLaTeX to be one of our TUG representatives this year.

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For the voting: She was already nominated last year and wishes that you consider new nominees first.

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I would like to nominate myself. I should remind you, that last year the situation was the same. I am writing this, looking at page 301 of TUGboat, Volume 38, No. 3. :-)

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Although I an not a real TeX-master (much more powerful wizards live here) I would like to nominate myself for the TUG experience.

I am an Electronic Engineer and using TeX and LaTeX since more time than I like to say... my Ph.D. thesis was written in plain TeX (1992). Now I am more the sort of a middle-power user than a TeXhacker, trying to evangelize for my current University (I have taught, and sometimes I repeat it, a Ph.D. seminar about writing papers in LaTeX)...

And I love ducks! ;-)

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  • ooh a duck :)
    – Paulo Cereda
    Feb 6, 2018 at 11:48
  • @PauloCereda with an acorn! Thanks a lot!
    – Rmano
    Feb 6, 2018 at 17:32
  • oh it was @samcarter's effort. :)
    – Paulo Cereda
    Feb 6, 2018 at 17:45
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    @Rmano The squirrel was too complicate :)
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Feb 6, 2018 at 17:50
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I nominate @cfr to be one of our TUG representatives this year.

Full disclosure: cfr had been TUG representative twice -- nevertheless I think she would be a good choice for this year.

enter image description here

(approval by the nominee: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/42498695#42498695)

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  • +1 from me (cannot vote for my own answer)
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Feb 3, 2018 at 14:29
  • Now I feel irrationally bad :(. Perhaps people don't like witch-owning cats?
    – cfr
    Feb 11, 2018 at 0:46
  • @cfr Now I feel rationally bad for nominating you and thus making you feel irrationally bad :( Please accept my apologies! If you have any suggestions to replace the witch/cat combination, please let me know and I'll create a new duck for you!
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Feb 11, 2018 at 13:24
  • That seems irrational ... ;).
    – cfr
    Feb 11, 2018 at 23:06

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