Having witnessed this pattern for too often the past year, I'd honestly say it's an endemic feature of ET's growth strategy - it comes with the logical choice to select the most active participants for gnome positions. The Mod Tech tag is useful to indicate changing hats, but it may not give succour when a debate between a participant and off-duty gnome(s) turns heated or downright nasty. Further, the perception of scrambling lieutenants may well be connected what Helen's above comment encapsulated so well - group dismissal by core users, as they've already travelled those curves of debates and insights.
Even while one may tire of this from happening, I think there's little one can do to prevent it from happening again in the future - aside from heightened awareness of risks that come with the current working model.
Another problem is the lack of separation between technical (SCOOP tweaking), editorial (FP content) and moderation tasks. FPers have blanket "superuser" powers but we have different skills and interests and end up not using all the powers or performing all the functions.
Jerome, for instance, adopts almost exclusively an editorial role, his moderation is style is hands-off, and his technical ability is close to nonexistent.
Colman, DoDo and afew take all three roles actively. I think it's fair to say InWales, Izzy, Fran and the stormy present do more editorial work than anything else, with tsp getting more involved in moderation.
My main contribution to the editorial function is diary rescues and promotions as I write less than other FPers but comment more than most users. I also have a hands-off moderation style.
Bob is "on leave" but used to do "friendly moderation" and editorial work, but no technical.
The thing is, really the point of SCOOP is that moderation is supposed to take place on a "community policing" model, but as you point out if you promote the most prolific commenters to FP status who else is left to do the "community moderation"? Especially since everyone wants to be as "inclusive" as possible.
The other problem is that as a FP team we don't have a well-defined editorial line (though Jerome has, on one occasion, objected to one of my diary rescues). So the front page is rather haphazard. The real meat of the site is in the diaries and it would be really good if we could upgrade to a software with a nice "tag cloud". to allow people to browse diaries by topic. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
