Ok here is a serious suggestion but a radical one.

How about moderators have to be democratically elected by forum members. There would be a set number of moderators and people could put themselves forward. If there were more candidates than mods posts then there would be an election and those who got the most votes would be elected mods.

There would be a set period of office (say a year but this could be decided later) and after that period was up all mods would have to submit themselves for re-election (assuming they wanted to carry on of courrse).

So what do people think? A good idea or not?

Not.

The moderators do an excellent job imo under very difficult circumstances. It's a team effort, so them electing people they think they'll be able to work with to make SF better, makes more sense than randomly elected people. We know who'd put themselves forward, comedy voting would happen and it'd be anarchy.

Outcome

This received a score of -8, but also it's not something we are interested in implementing at this time. We are happy with our current system and its results.