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In placaes like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and various forums the community divides into three groups:> 1. Content creators: those who past and answer questions, etc;
> 2. Moderators: those who write and enforce rules and standards; and
Not that simple, especially on Wikipedia. Often but not always, the initial reputation of "moderators" is gained by being a "prolific contributor". Even after becoming a moderator, it's still common for one to continue contributing high-quality content. This system is commonly described as a "meritocracy" but not without vocal critics (on whether it's a true "meritocracy", and on whether "meritocracy" is a good system).
This creates a lot of complications. From my experience, many of the most toxic Wikipedia political struggles arise as a result of the conflicts between:
1. One's opinion about the subject in the article.
2. One's opinion about the quality of the article itself.
3. One's opinion about the editorial policy that is supposed to be applied to the article.
4. One's opinion about another editor as a person.
5. One's opinion about another editor's opinion on (2), (3), and (4).
I think the same thing happens in free and open source software projects as well.
I genuinely wonder what would be the outcome in an alternative system of which moderators are purely neutral observers and do not particulate or contribute content themselves, and what are the advantages and disadvantages in both systems.
I expect that the benefit is: reduced personal attachment on particular issues, and that would be helpful on reducing unnecessary conflicts. However, no personal attachment also means there's no personal motivation on actually solving the problems.