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Nornagest comments on Downvote stalkers: Driving members away from the LessWrong community? - Less Wrong Discussion
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That depends on two things we don't have: (a) an active mod community that's reasonably large in proportion to the userbase, and (b) a culture that accepts and ideally applauds an authoritarian approach to dealing with trolls and other assorted troublemakers.
Having the button without having the support for it is useless at best, and at worst can be actively counterproductive by creating an expectation that the mods can't possibly meet, or by encouraging an adversarial relationship between mods and users. Scott Alexander's got a similar system going over at slatestarcodex (which, to be fair, is excellent in terms of top-level content, and above average in terms of commentariat as long as you don't mind the occasional insane diatribe), and it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of deterring the type of commentary it was instituted to prevent.
We can set up a system in which mods are elected. This might provide a sufficient amount of mods and wouldn't be authoritarian.
Does anyone have experience with a board that elects its mods?
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, though it seems like it's got some interesting complications, such has who gets to vote and keeping the voting honest-- I've just only been on boards where the mods were chosen from the top.
I've seen a board occasionally elect a moderator (with other mods appointed). The resulting drama was way too high for whatever benefits the election may have had.
Formal elections are rare, but vague consensus processes (along the lines of "anyone who cares can nominate a mod; we'll pick whoever gets the most nods as long as they aren't blatantly electioneering") seem pretty common. Honestly I think I'd prefer the latter to the former.
AFAIK, Wikipedia and StackExchange use elected mods. They don't seem to be faring too bad.