My name is Spevacus, and I've been participating on the Stack Exchange network for a couple of years now, primarily focusing on Meta SE and sprinkling bits of content on the other sites. I'll also lend my knowledge to various per-site metas where I feel I can meaningfully answer questions with the knowledge I've gained as a frequent Meta contributor.
It pains me to see that Freelancing is facing down site closure, as I've visited the site quite a few times before joining SE during my brief time as a freelance programmer. Some of the Q&A pairs of the site were of particular interest to me, especially when I was first starting out, so I feel a bit of sadness that the activity in the site has dwindled and that one (seemingly very awesome!) moderator is currently shouldering most of the moderation burden.
Since I first saw this post, I refamiliarized myself with this site to get a gauge on current community participation and see where the pain points are, and whether or not I could lend my assistance. As Juan M noted in this question, what bytebuster said in their answer here is very important. Community-driven moderation is one of the core benefits of the Stack Exchange model: Anyone with enough reputation can help keep the site clean by reviewing, flagging, and voting. The review queues at present have a few suggested edits pending, but otherwise they appear relatively clean, which is great to see. The core problem simply seems to be a lack of interest from the current power users to stand in moderator elections.
As Canadian Luke mentioned in a comment, they need a helping hand to shoulder the site's general moderation burden. I can speak from experience when I say that moderation burn-out is a very real problem, especially when you're the only one managing things. Being able to rely upon your co-moderators is important when ensuring the team can operate seamlessly, and it's here that I hope to be able to lend a hand.
As I said in a chat room, I'd be willing to step up and stand as an appointed pro-tempore moderator should other users who would ordinarily be eligible to run for moderator in the previous elections here be unable to do so. I'm aware that I've yet to participate in the site as a question asker or answerer, and in the coming weeks I do plan to change that to try and earn some reputation and help out from a user perspective. However, I have moderation experience on other sites (not SE) as well as a sizable user-level-moderation history on Meta Stack Exchange. I'm also a current contributor to Charcoal, and organization that seeks to destroy spam and rude/abusive posts all across the network, which I hope speaks to my experience and diligence when it comes to finding and destroying spam/evil content.
My interest in assisting this site, and giving Canadian Luke a decent break, is to ensure that Freelancing.SE doesn't become closed due to a lack of users who are not willing to stand as moderators. The content provided here has been invaluable to me in the past, and I'd certainly appreciate the opportunity to pay the site back, despite the current lack of contribution to it on my own part.
As I said before, I'd very much prefer current users who are already active in the site could stand as a site moderator, but should no others be able to do so, I'd be willing to be appointed should it mean the prevention of site closure. I have a sizable amount of free time that I'm willing to lend to the site's day-to-day moderation requirements and I'd be certain to work with all of the active users and moderators here to ensure the site runs smoothly.
To Canadian Luke: I sincerely appreciate your efforts of shouldering the responsibility of being a moderator for as long as you have (since 2013!), and I sincerely respect your current feelings of burn-out. If it comes to it, I look forward to working with you in keeping Freelancing.SE clean and well taken care-of!
