This is basically my take on the situation. People value debate (arguing) but don’t actually value or respect disagreement. It’s ultimately a self-destructive cycle where people seek out and magnify divisions to give them an excuse to dunk on each other as savagely as possible, and then when the dunkees give up and stop posting, the search is on for a new fissure to play the game across. (To preempt the obvious response, this is a self-criticism as much as it is a criticism of anyone else.)
I think both Chris and Keed have made some good points. I don’t think there’s a rules-based solution to any of this, and all these community-based/RFC/whatever systems are mirages. All voting-based systems can be subverted to produce most any result by agenda control, so those systems mainly launder decisions made by the groups who control the agenda with a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
At the same time, I think the argument that “it’s the internet lol no one should care,” is not quite true. An internet community is a community, so people care about it because community and belonging are important to people. What should not be important is particular moderation decisions because those will often be wrong and people are just going to have to live with that reality.
Fundamentally, the only thing that will really work is a cultural shift that emphasizes respect. If you want to argue with people while thinking that the people you argue with are total shitlords, of course it’s not going to work. You can’t build a community on mutual hatred. You can have a community where lots of people hate each other if they’re ultimately there to talk about poker, but it can’t be the foundation.
Absent that kind of cultural change, it all seems hopeless. That said, some governance changes would be helpful. Generally, I think moderation should be almost exclusively 1-day to 1-week bans and should be aimed more at supporting community norms of respectful debate than dealing with “problem” posters. Bans should be explained in the post that triggered them, not in the drama forum, so that people can develop a collective sense of what’s in bounds and what isn’t.
Moderation also needs more turnover. There’s no reason to have really long-term moderators. Six mods serving three month terms, with two replaced each month by rand() from the pool of posters above a certain level of activity. Some sort of mechanism to veto really bad choices by supermajority vote.
Somewhat separately, having a rogue admin reading and publicizing PMs is nuts, and we need to get the replacement in as soon as humanly possible. People digging around trying to dig up dirt is also bad stuff.