I'd like to create a robust mod workflow this time around.

I really hate watching a voluntary chore squander the time of some of the most productive/engaged members of the community.

This is mostly a note to myself, but here are some random thoughts from someone jaded by seven years of vBulletin:

- To prevent spammers, newly registered users will be assigned the rank of "Junior". Juniors can't do anything until they've made a topic in "Introduce Yourself". They don't need to write an Elliquiy-level biography. Just a quick paragraph of coherent sentences so that someone can confirm that they are probably real and promote them into a "Member". This rate-limits human spammers.

- This time I want to empower members to do basic things like re-title and move their topic. GMs should be able to "hide" user content, and hidden content is still visible to its creator (i.e. GMs shouldn't be able to destroy content). -- This is actually how even my delete button works except I haven't yet programmed the creator-can-still-see-it function. "Can you move my topic?" is such a waste of time for both the member and the moderator slave.

- Everything should pipe through the report system, and acting upon reports should be as effortless as possible. In fact, the member that reports a PM/user/post/topic should be able to actually act on it themselves. Like, the report should show up as "KittyGiggle wants to [Nuke] this user" with the attached message "Obvious spambot". A moderator reads it and just clicks "Confirm [Nuke]". 

- The mod kit should empower people to help the community, not shackle them into a customer service position and drape them in awkward political anguish where they suddenly have to openly moderate their own friends. It just feels lame when last week you were trolling a topic with your buddies and now you have to get "Um okay guys stop it it's not right" like a prat. Ideally when someone submits a report, it becomes a rendezvous channel between the reporter and the moderators. Except it'd be better if the user only sees "Moderator 1" and "Moderator 2" rather than real usernames.

- Roleplays should be self-contained ecosystems if they want to be. Within them, they should have their own little serfdoms where little knights can stick their own topics and create their own tabs and moderate their own serfs. I haven't even begun to ponder how that would actually work particularly from a UI angle, but it's what I mean when I say that users should be able to manage their own going-ons.

I have the unique opportunity to actually see these things through. I also want to polish the software with this kind of kit for when I create my goblin smut forum.