The SE.AI website https://ai.stackexchange.com/ is the dominant AI related online forum in the internet. It contains of 6k questions and is part of the larger Stack exchange network. Since a while major changes are taking place in the website. The situation in the past was, that the moderator played a minor role. He didn't posted many comments nor answers, but his objective was administrative nature. He was some kind of technical administrator but wasn't involved in running the website.
Since the year 2019 the situation has changed drastically. The new agenda in SE.AI is, that the moderator is the top rated user in the forum. That means, the current moderator has posted the most answers and has earned the most reputation points. That means, the moderator knows most about Artificial Intelligence and at the same time he is solving conflicts in the community.
Before we can judge about this development it make sense to describe this management style from an abstract point of view. It's equal to elect the best player in a soccer team as the team leader. The result is, that the team leader is the weak point in the overall system. Let us construct an example. Suppose a difficult question is asked in the forum. Only the moderator is able to provide the answer because he has the most experience of all the users. The other users in the community have a weaker position and they not enough skills about Artificial Intelligence. That means, the knowledge and power is distributed unequal.
This management style has some advantages but also disadvantages. The advantage is, that it will minimizes the conflicts in the team. The moderator is accepted because of two reasons, first his social role is strong, and secondly his knowledge is strong. The disadvantage is, that a moderator driven community is vulnerable to a takeover. If the single point of failure makes a mistake the entire group becomes in trouble. The second problem is, that the stress level for the moderator is higher. To defend his strong position he has to create the most postings and has to know everything. The danger is, that the moderator isn't able to do on the long term.
In the management theory there are two different principles discussed: top down moderation and bottom up moderation. Top down moderation is available in SE.AI. It's the classical form of group organization. The group has a strong internal cohesion but fails to adapt to the environment. The team is fixed, new members aren't welcome the moderator is not allowed to leave the group.
It's a bit difficult to predict the future development of SE.AI. One option is, that the moderator is able to handle the disadvantages of top down management style and remains in a active position for the next 10 years. The second option is, that the group isn't able to adapt to future needs. For example, that a request from the outside isn't answered correct. Basically spoken, SE.AI is doing an experiment to investigate if top down leadership works in reality.