Re: [Gendispatch] New Version Notification for draft-ecahc-moderation-00.txt

[Rob Sayre <[e-mail]>]

Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I agree that the text is unclear on whether this team replaces the
> chairs or is a supplement to them.

Yes. I think it should be a supplement. There will always be unproductive
technical debates that a general moderator team will be unqualified to
assess.

I thought Mark raised a good point in saying that a volunteer team is an
artificial constraint. Most organizations of this size would opt for paid
"Community Manager" staff. This worked OK at Mozilla with a relatively
technical and international community, and I think better than the IETF
status quo. That's not just programmers, but also translators, MDN
contributors, etc. That role did not scale at Twitter, with 100s of
millions of users in 56 languages. It did work OK at VSCO, with a large
user base of teenagers and college students.

It doesn't sound like anyone is comfortable hiring such a staff into the
LLC, akin to the tools team. But, if the IETF did hire such a person, the
first thing they would do is a lot of data gathering. This draft has jumped
right to enforcement, when that is only one part of building a healthy
community. A Community Manager would also look for ways to make the
defaults better. It's not clear to me that the authors have consulted with
such a professional. I think a 1-2 meeting consulting engagement, and a
report might be better.

thanks,
Rob