User moderators

[nic-hartley]

Goal

Empower certain users with some admin permissions, for community moderation. (We'll call them "mods", as opposed to "admins" and "users")

Description

This is what needs discussion, but in general:

• Mods are basically normal users, plus a little -- they are not admins minus a little. (So by default, if an admin can do it, a mod can't.)
• Mods should mostly be able to do "grunt work" stuff, which is comparatively low-impact but still needs to be done. High-impact stuff (especially banning users!) should be something only admins can do.
• What, specifically, should mods be able to do?
  • This is what's up for discussion, but I'm thinking they can watch the flag queue and accept flags (delete the flagged thing) or reject them. They'd also get the ability to add notes for admins to look at about things like banning users.

Related to #23 but not a duplicate, because that talks about general user moderation tools like flagging; mods will probably be able to see the flag queue. However, this should probably wait until after flags are available, since most of what mods will do is related to that.

This is an attempt to reduce the workload on admins, so that they can focus on more important moderation and administration tasks. Whatever you're considering proposing, please make sure it still fits that.

We should also make sure to log all mod actions, so they can be audited. We can count on admins to be trustworthy (they have DB access; if they're not, the whole thing is doomed anyway), but mods... not necessarily.

Additional notes

The mods will be hand-picked by the admins -- this FR intentionally does not address any automated way to pick them. At most, this will probably include a dashboard so admins can quickly see good candidates, but there will always be an admin involved in the final promotion.