Mic Check: Bulletin Board - Most Recent 2 Versions of Draft hosting guidelines (read at yr leisure)

[joshcryer]

7. Pinned threads has its merits.

If we had a Host, we could use that Host solely to pin threads, through GA consensus. The job of the Host to deal with SoP violations could be left to the jury, after consensus, the Jury could be given the thread in which the consensus was had, and I have no doubt that it would perform its job adequately. If that fails, the Host could be tasked, solely through GA consensus, to lock said SoP violations.

Hosts have more power than just pinning threads. They can lock threads, they can ban users, and as we have seen with other groups, the hierarchical power of the primary host leaves much to be desired (if all Hosts were equals like operators in an unregistered IRC channel, then it would be different). One should never overlook the power of Host #1. I think that it opens up the opportunity for anti-OWSers to conspire about ways to cause headaches with the hierarchy, and because no hierarchy can be expected to be totally ambivalent, the power structure will trickle down within the group causing factionalization.