Jon (thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk) [050712 05:55]:
BTW, thanks for this. A lot of your suggestions are actually close to ideas we've been floating already, so I expect the problems can be called obvious ;-)
The AC is a fairly heavy duty to do properly - you have to be able to cope with unbelievable amounts of crap without becoming flustered - and burnout is far too easy. Dealing with relentless obnoxiousness and stupidity is intrinsically not fun. A number of prospective mid-term draftees have turned the job down already ...
I'm not sure how to get it to scale. I can only see the workload going up as the editor population goes up, and hence the problem children in proportion.
Some people also seem to regard the AC as a parent-like authority to run to in case of conflict, or to try to use a RFAr as a way to bludgeon their opponent in debate. This is considered less than ideal.
- d.