Perhaps this should go under Comments and Suggestions, but since the post I'm responding to is here, this's where my reply is going. Move it if you want to.

I agree with boccaccio, but I'm not as polite. At the time that Gary was considering stepping down as super-moderator, I PMed him, and among other things told him that I thought there were too many moderators, and that I didn't care for the heirarchical system. Now, we have MORE moderators and a cemented-in heirarchy.

I think the ideal system would be to have four equal moderators and if three of them agree on something, that's the rule. Speed in decisionmaking is not something to aspire to. The faster a decision is made, the less consideration went into the making off it. What I'm looking for is a consistency of application, which we're not going to find with each moderator having his or her own little fiefdom. The rules will be (have already been) applied differently in one (or three) sub-forum than they are in another.

The concept of an appeals process is a fine one, but I have to question whether it exists other than in theory. Tourguide made no secret of how he thought our last 'crisis' was badly handled but, even though he had the authority, he did nothing to overule the decision(s) made. Maybe that was because no one went through the proper appeals procedure, but it was evident from what was being posted in three different threads that the Forumites were asking for some action to be undertaken, and none was.

I believe that there's going to continue to be an enormous reluctance to overule a decision once made. No one wants to contradict a friend, or make them look bad in a public forum, and that's understandable, but it means that in practice moderators are likely to prove to be independant Barons. I'd rather see them as part of a parliament. If you must keep this heirachy thing, why not have mods be required to check their decisions with the super-mods BEFORE they enact them? That would improve consistency.

Remember -- speed kills.