Leadership is not the essential purpose of moderation. The purpose is to raise the tone of the debate and make the community adhere to norms. If the active membership is pretty good at adhering to norms, and you just need to take out occasional trash, shadowy moderation works fine. LW has a dedicated core with extremely strong norms, and I suspect that even if Eliezer went into a coma for the next year and the site was completely unmoderated that wouldn’t change.
Sad? I’d say quite the opposite. If the best contribution to the community is that of normal members, and the contribution of moderators is a lesser one, that’s well and good.
1) I think we can hardly criticize him for not writing enough, given that he’s about to spend a month writing a book for free for all of us.
2) It’d be pretty sad if having a moderator in place of a member was an active harm to the community.
Moderation is about leadership. If you do it from the shadows it’s not as effective.
Leadership is not the essential purpose of moderation. The purpose is to raise the tone of the debate and make the community adhere to norms. If the active membership is pretty good at adhering to norms, and you just need to take out occasional trash, shadowy moderation works fine. LW has a dedicated core with extremely strong norms, and I suspect that even if Eliezer went into a coma for the next year and the site was completely unmoderated that wouldn’t change.
Sad? I’d say quite the opposite. If the best contribution to the community is that of normal members, and the contribution of moderators is a lesser one, that’s well and good.