Thanks Joe for such a detailed and comprehensive perspective.
Many of those points do resonate and we already have them in place, others are a work in progress.
Our focus has always been on quality not quantity, and certainly temperament matters.
I find it is important to have a blend of personalities, it gives depth to discussion, there is nothing worse than an echo chamber for stifling thought. Also, conflict cannot be avoided entirely. There is always at least one troublesome case that no amount of temperament can satisfy, and these are the awkward scenarios that no one wants to, or likes, to manage. So you do need to have members of the team that aren’t uncomfortable dealing with those - usually this is where team work comes into it, so there is support and admins can do more of the heavy lifting.
A runway for members to move towards moderation is very important. Not everyone wants the responsibility, so providing a place where they can choose to remain helps with retention and burn-out. This also recognises contribution and allows regular members to identify who the experienced and trusted contributors are.
There are some challenges getting this framework right in discourse as some permissions tend to be aligned to trust levels (something imo that promotes volume over substance) when I would prefer to be able to do this all on the group level.