These are good questions - thank you. Some of those things are going to be announced fairly soon as-is, so this is in a way a sneak peek.
Do RMB mods and Forum/Discord mods agree on what steps to take for identical or very similar transgressions? If not, where is the split and why?
It’s pretty much impossible to make it 100% clear-cut in one direction or the other in every situation, so there will be differences (this applies generally, not just TSP - NS moderation for example faces the same thing). What exacerbates it further is that we often have the situation that there is a somewhat limited overlap between those having the RMB experience and those having the off-site experience (be it forum or Discord), for a number of reasons that would take probably the length of this post to specify.
So to answer the question itself: In some (not all, and not even most) cases, there are and have been different views which can be broadly grouped into RMB mod views and Off-site mod views. We’ve recognized that this is in part structural, so as of a few days ago we’ve moved away from having a set contact point and toward having a dedicated channel for these matters in Discord. We’re also going to update the dispatch, since that’s currently still on HS’ nation, and that will distill and clarify some of those. Additionally, (as alluded to below) we’re going to draft up some internal policy to help align things.
I understand certain things require different handlings, such as the ability for Discord to timeout users while the RMB can only suppress singular posts and eject or ban, but I’d like to see if one side is more restricted than the other for no particularly good reason.
Not sure I know what you mean with “restricted”. In the hierarchy as described in the Community Guidelines, the RMB team is below the off-site team, but the extent of the restriction there is merely that the RMB team’s jurisdiction is the RMB only rather than the entire space (off-site plus RMB).
Do mods have enough trust from above and confidence in themselves (mildly rhetorical) to apply the community standards and take actions, including more aggressive actions such as kicks or ejections, on their own?
You’ve correctly identified one of the issues which we’re clarifying with internal policy.
Can an appeals process be more formalized and centralized to cover all aspects of TSP’s coverage? In other words, I would like to see an appeal for an RMB action go the same place as an appeal for a Forum action, as the mod team is the mod team across the board, and should be able to cover the facts regardless of where it was.
Yes - you’ve already seen some of the discussion in the #rmb-moderation channel, I assume. This is one of the items we’re working on, moving towards something that’s fairly simple and most likely unified as you just stated.
Can suspensions of moderators be put into place when they are undergoing an investigation into potential moderator bias, abuse, or other misconduct? To be specific, I believe Drystar’s moderatorship should be suspended until the final release of whatever the mod/admin team is investigating regarding his conduct last week. If he committed misconduct, then he should be removed as a mod, and if he did not, then he should be reinstated as before.
We had already discussed this internally before your question. Suspensions are a perfectly legitimate tool to use, but in this case we don’t see an imminent danger of mod power abuse during this process, so we don’t feel the need to suspend him. Note that this shouldn’t be interpreted in any way as endorsement or denunciation of any of Drystar’s actions (including the one that has led to the litany of criticism in the past few days).