TL;DR: There's been a change in the candidate list for the 2021 Moderator Election. If you've already voted, you should confirm your votes still accurately represent your preferences. Details follow.
It recently came to the attention of the Stack Overflow moderation team that Shree, one of the candidates in the 2021 moderator election, submitted plagiarized content as part of their answers to the questionnaire.
Shree has subsequently made a public admission that he had done so:
It's not Zoe's fault, I copied Zoe's answer.
With that question, I agree with Zoe's answer. When I copy that answer, I'm not sure what's going through my head.
It's a blunder on my part.
We respect and admire anyone who admits to their mistakes and seeks to rectify them. However, this statement did not reflect the extent or severity of the infraction. As subsequent analysis by multiple users (including ayhan and GammaGames) would reveal, the extent of the plagiarism was much greater than copying a single answer from Zoe. We found Shree had copied nearly all of his answers from other candidates who submitted their nominations before his.
On Stack Overflow, plagiarism is viewed as a grave offense. Attribution is absolutely required for all copied content. Our Help Center article on referencing warns:
Do not copy the complete text of external sources; instead, use their words and ideas to support your own. And always give proper credit to the author and site where you found the text, including a direct link to it.
These are the rules of the site, clearly stated, and they apply to all users here, regardless of context. Furthermore, because moderators are the ones who investigate and judge accusations of plagiarism, they must be held to an even higher standard.
The existing moderators and community managers (CMs) have had extensive internal discussions about what, if anything, should be done in response to this finding of plagiarism. The election page notes that a candidate should "lead by example" and "show respect for their fellow community members in their actions and words". It further notes that, because "community moderators are accorded the highest level of privilege in our community", they "should themselves be exemplars of positive behavior and leaders within the community".
Therefore, it is our collective decision that such plagiarism on the part of a nominee is too significant of an offense to overlook. It violates the rules and standards of this community, and it is conduct unbecoming to the role of moderator. We did not arrive at this decision lightly, but we ultimately felt that we had no other choice. In any other circumstance, plagiarism would be handled by deleting the offending post and either warning or suspending the user responsible. A suspension is already reason to disqualify a candidate. Even though we do not feel that Shree's actions would warrant suspension on the first offense, we believe that such actions call the appropriateness of his candidacy into question. If an elected moderator had engaged in similar behavior, there would be serious questions as to whether or not they should remain a moderator.
Based on a super-majority vote of the current moderators, as well as agreement of the community managers, Shree's nomination has been withdrawn. The withdrawal process will follow the procedure established and outlined last year by Juan M when a candidate voluntarily withdrew from the election (except that, with the recent improvements to the election user interface, there is built-in support for withdrawing a nomination, which will be used here).
Since Stack Overflow uses the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method for elections, and voters can now rank all candidates in order from most to least desirable, the withdrawal should have minimal impact on the outcome of the election. For example, if you had selected Shree as your first choice, the STV system will simply use your second choice as if it were your first. As such, there is theoretically no need for you to reconsider your preferences—the change will happen automatically.
Of course, if you choose to do so, you can edit your ballot at any time on the election page up until the election ends on October 26, 2021 at 20:00 UTC (4 PM EDT).
We extend our deepest apologies to the community for the disruption that this causes, and we sincerely hope that everyone can learn something from the mistakes that led up to this choice. We do not hold grudges on Stack Overflow, so we further hope that Shree will see fit to keep up his good work in the flag/review queues and continue assisting us in improving the quality of the site's content.