User blog:MACH-59330/A suggestion - streamlining TDL's local staff team

A foreword: I suggest this for the benefit of your community. This is not meant to degrade - I am impressed at how you have formed this tightly-knit place around common interests and interaction, as well as grasping the technical basics of a wiki alone. You fill me with pride.

I feel that this community has been brought into conflict by the vast quantity of bureaucrats, admins and chatmods on the wiki who have been promoted. I was drawn to this issue by badly-placed discussions at CCC. The chatban log has a significant quantity of bans that do not have a chatban reason, and instances of people undoing bans on themselves and others. The first suggests a lack of transparency or reason to present to the blockee (although it may be just an issue of haste from the blocking moderator), while the second suggests internal conflict or local staff defying the hierarchy of the wiki.

I suggest a nearly clean slate. This involves choosing a streamlined team of buros, admins and chatmods, and making some tough decisions as to who will go and who will stay. The community agrees on a policy that makes clear what you expect from every user entering chat. This ensures that people don't spread misinformation or bad ban appeals to TDL walls or other chatrooms. It also ensures all newcomers are welcome.

In general, giving a role to someone is something that all the local staff should be involved in. There should be confidence that they will use their rights in a way that will help TDL.

I am asking much of you. But I feel that TDL's chat will benefit above all.