:salam: everyone, this is our second episode of unplugged with GS Admin. We have **TLK bhai ** with us for the 2nd episode of **Unplugged with GS Admins. ****TLK **is the administrator and ex director of the GS. In this Q & A I have included what goes on behind the scene at GS. And, as always, members are encouraged to ask questions & hopefully TLK will answer them. In other words he is all yours…get tomatoes ready. Ok I’m kidding be nice. 
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1: What is your name?
A1: My first name is Tariq
2: Where do you hail from and where do you reside? Do you have dual nationality?
A2: I am a Pakistani born US citizen. I live in Northwest region of USA
3: What is your educational and professional background?
A3: Masters in Civil Engineering with specialization in Structural Analysis. I work for Aerospace industry, analyzing airframe structures.
4: What does vice president of the GS do?
A4: Higher level management if you may. Team integration, policies, guidelines, future direction etc. VP has nothing to do with the day to day running of GS.
5: How do admins/CMs/Mods decides who gets banned and who does not?
We have policies, and violation of those policies leads to warnings. Repeated warnings (depends upon the violation) leads to temporary or permanent bans. There is handful of policies whose violation could result in an immediate ban (Spam, posting porn …etc).
6: How are moderators appointed & what is the criteria for someone to become a moderator?
Good behavior, good reputation is a base criteria. Being a subject matter expert is another consideration (all of our C&IT team consists of IT background people). General guideline is a minimum of 6 month old membership with at least 1500 posts. These are the pre qualifications.
Once a CM needs a mod for his/her channel, he/she starts looking within the existing team. If the CM thinks that a good match is not available within the team, then he looks at the members and pre-qualifies them. After that, he nominates that person in front of other CMs and admins. CM requires 3 votes for the nomination, and zero NO. That means that if 8 CMs and admins say yes, but even one says No, then the nominee is disqualified. Once the CM gets required yesses, he sends a PM to the member and asks for the interest. If the member is interested, then he/she gets added as a mod.
7: Infraction system: Is it arbitrary or are there set rules for giving infractions?
There are set rules, but as in anything else in life, there are always exceptions.
8: What is your political orientation (conservative vs liberal)?
Depends upon what is liberalism, but I guess I am a liberal conservative, if that even makes any sense.
9: Which political party do you support and why?
In the current politics of Pakistan, I think that the most promising party is PTI. PTI is a third most voted party per last election, and just by the process of elimination (PPP and PMLN are the two most corrupt parties in my humble opinion), PTI gets my support.
10: What is your take on political situation in the country now?
Change was due, and because we have such a corrupt and untrustworthy legal and parliamentary system, a struggle to bring that change through a peaceful show of street power was pretty much invited by the corrupt rulers of this country. I mean, it was either that or an army take over.
11: Do you think Imran Khan & Tahir ul Qadri can bring real democracy, unlike what we have now?
I don’t know much about TUQ. He is a 15 minutes of fame kind of guy, and has no real political history. Imran on the other hand has a potential. The term “real democracy” is very subjective in nature, but yes Imran can help us get rid of the nepotism and corruption that we all are witnessing and suffering from.
12: Protest politics are they helpful or are damaging to the country?
If that is the only way out, then it can only help and nothing else. Ripping my belly apart and pulling out my liver is helpful or damaging? Very helpful if I have developed a 3rd degree liver cancer, I believe.
13: Do you believe that bad democracy is better than good dictatorship or good governance is more important?
For a country with such low literacy rate as Pakistan, democratic system can be easily abused, as so evident in in our current situation. We need an honest leadership. If it come through democratic system then it’s great. If not, then just beating the drum of democracy is not going to cut it.
I believe that our immediate solution is a back door/pseudo democratic set-up for the next term. A semi-selected govt if you may.
14: Do you think Nawaz Sharif’s govt will survive until 2018 or will there be mid-term elections?
I think we will see a mid-term election. Nawaz and a full term are two opposite things. Never happened, and never will happen.
15: Do you think tenure of National Assembly and provincial assemblies be cut from 5 to 4 years?
With the slow and crawling infrastructure that we have in Pakistan, a govt needs 5 years to deliver. 4 years are little too short
16: Do you think that some key ministries should be managed only by technocrats, or it must be an elected representative of people to handle any department?
We have Secretaries in the Ministries who can be the subject matter experts and a real show runner. For the Ministries of the State, a person should have relative know how, but he/she should come from the elected force. Some Ministries though require a very stringent selecting process (Foreign, Finance etc), but still they should come from the elected representation.
17: What is your take on creation of more provinces?
I am all for it. We need it badly. If for nothing else, it is required to break the monopoly of certain parties in certain areas. Plus that will well distribute the constituencies.
18: Should FATA, Azad Kashmir and GB be made provinces of Pakistan?
It should be the choice of their people, not ours. We can propose to them, and through simple referendum, they can decide. Speaking selfishly, I would not have them be a part of Pakistan. With the relationship we have with our neighboring countries, these regions play a role of buffer zone for us. If anything, we should impose a stricter LOC between these regions and the mainland Pakistan (the divide line is already there, but it’s not controlled properly).
19: If you were made PM what would be your top 5 priorities in terms of things to do?
· Foreign investment (to create more, decent paying jobs).
· Higher salaries in Police (that will reduce the corruption in that department)
· A governmental check and balance system based only on Executive, Legislative and Judicial (No. Army and Media are not the branch/pillar of that system, no matter what anyone says).
· Friendly relationship with neighboring countries.
· Education
20: Population growth: What is your take on it & what can be done to control it in your opinion?
Nothing. We should only educate people, but if someone wants to go for 8 kids, let them be.
21: Religious intolerance and what do you think should be done to end that?
Mosques should be zonal. In 8 blocks, or amongst the population of X number of Muslim people, only one mosque should be allowed. Back in Karachi (Gulshan Iqbal Block 2 to be more specific), there were Deobandi, Ahle Hadees and Barelvi mosques within stone throw distance from each other. Every given chance, and especially during Friday sermon, the molvis of those mosques were doing nothing but spewing hatred on each other over the PA system. People of that area had negative/positive feelings for each other just because of the mosque the person would go to. And this is Karachi I am talking about. Think of the emotions that may rise if you have a Barelvi/Deobandi or Ahle Hadees/Shia mosques in front of each other in relatively non-educated areas.
Molvis and their hateful speeches are the biggest reason behind religious intolerance. Why do you think Punjab is most suffering from this disease? It’s because of the number of mosques within ear distance in Punjab, that belong to different sects.
22: Who is your favorite politician and why?
Why Altaf Bhai, of course. Do I need to explain why?
This concludes our chat with TLK. Thank you so much for your time. 
