That sounds like a blockchain with signature verification against a previously established and acknowledged set of keys as consensus mechanism. Pretty reasonable, as far as use cases go.

However, it doesn't solve the issue of disagreements and community splitting. If one part of the mod team decides to add another mod, but the rest doesn't, what's to prevent that part from splitting off and continuing their own version of the moderation chain? How is abuse of power handled? And in case of a split, how are community members informed?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a poor idea, I'm just saying that it won't solve the issues of community splits, and I'm not sure anything ever can.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

I wasn't trying to solve that particular problem, on the assumption that it has already been solved and the same solution can be adapted to the implement I proposed. Someone else who replied to me suggested something like requiring majority approval to add or remove a mod.

Another possibility is for the creator of a community to be a super mod, who can add or remove regular mods, or transfer their super mod status to someone else. That scheme could easily be generalized to allow multiple super mods, or to include a whole hierarchy of mods for large communities.