Is any of this overhead really needed? What does it accomplish?
(Serious question, maybe I’m just too dim to get it)
Disclaimer: I use nixos but try not to participate in it (private fork), after seeing how they treat prospective contributors.
Moderation is needed, but often abused and used as a tool to create echo chambers.
> What does it accomplish?
As mentioned above, It accomplishes one thing: creating an echo chamber.
Echo cambers are useful, because it shows "wide support" from the community while ignoring the fact that the "community" has been reduced to just the "right people".
For example, in a room there are 100 people, three that have been elected / selected to lead the 97. The three, censor / kick / eliminate 90 people because of their dissenting opinions. Now, the majority (3+7=10) can rule in peace. Quite simple actually.
It's basically authoritarianism that breeds fascism. This is usually a product of the death of objective truth.
Oh! and this is not a LEFT vs. RIGHT problem. Here is a good read: https://danielmiessler.com/blog/bad-governments-on-the-left-...
> The Nix Steering Committee (SC) (https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/) is the elected community leadership body. It was established as part of the Nix governance constitution (https://github.com/NixOS/org/blob/main/doc/constitution.md) last year, after which the first elections were held, where 450 contributors voted for the current members. This years election (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-election-committee-announc...) is currently in progress. The SC generally is responsible over project direction and community matters, including management of teams. While most responsibilities are delegated, the SC has the authority to step in when necessary.
> The moderation team (https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/) was established before the SC or constitution existed. The initial moderators were appointed from RFC 102 (https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0102-moderati...), with the mandate to self-select successors. Over the years the team has changed members a lot, none of the initial members are part of it anymore, and the last larger rotation happened last year. The responsibilities include moderation according to the Code of Conduct (CoC) (https://github.com/NixOS/.github/blob/master/CODE\_OF\_CONDU...) of the official community spaces, which is mostly the Discourse and a bunch of Matrix channels. Earlier this year the now-existing SC took on the responsibility of approving new mod team members and CoC changes (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/code-of-conduct-and-moderation...).