User blog comment:Rappy 4187/Technical Update: June 28, 2017/@comment-24258073-20170629232848/@comment-1611013-20170630211145

"A chat moderator has been entrusted with the responsibility of moderating the chat. If they are doing something that warrants being kicked out of the chat, that seems pretty serious. Having their rights removed and/or being blocked, even temporarily, seems like a totally reasonable consequence."

And you know what? If you were an administrator on a wiki where this happened, and you made the decision to take that person's powers away, that's fine. You made the choice to do that because you felt it was appropriate. However, after this change, it is no longer a choice. Admins no longer have the choice to deal with their misbehaving mods because you have made the decision for us. A chat mod says something rude, but it otherwise a good fit in their position? We are no longer able to kick this person as a warning to stop. The only immediate response we have now is to demote them. And yeah, sure, we could just type in chat "hey, don't do that" (that is, unless we get muted because other people were talking just a little too quickly for wikia's taste), but it's a much less...of a serious response. It doesn't carry the same weight as seeing "You have been kicked from chat." And I just...don't understand why you're making the decision to keep this accidental change in place when there haven't been any problems with it. It's literally accomplishing nothing but taking choices away from administrators.

"The stakes need to be somewhat high if you want to have the behavior to improve, otherwise it won't. And if the behavior doesn't improve, then the user clearly should not be a chat moderator."

I don't see what you mean by "the stakes need to be high". Like I said above, if a chat moderator said something rude, but is normally fine, they shouldn't have to be demoted to solve the issue. This isn't about a chat moderator "going rogue" - that was never even mentioned. But kicking chat mods is something that is used to deal with small issues. I have done it several times in the past for issues that are not worth demoting someone over. Obviously if the behavior doesn't improve, they should be removed from their position, but again, that's not what this is about. Taking away the ability to kick them has taken away the administrator's ability to effectively deal with small issues that don't warrant a demotion.

"A chat moderator "going rogue" is a problem with that specific person, not something you should rely on a feature to solve."

Since I've already responded to the rogue part, I'll skip that. Kicking a misbehaving chat mod is much more than "relying on a feature". It's an immediate and impacting way of telling them that their behavior is not okay, and that if they continue, they will receive a more severe punishment. This logic that "relying on a feature" won't solve an issue with a specific person could be applied to anyone, not just chat mods. Seriously, by that logic, what is the point of even having the option to kick, if it's supposedly not going to fix the problem with that specific person? Why not just ban everyone who misbehaves, because kicking them is just relying on a feature to solve your issues. It's a flawed argument, just like the entire argument for removing these admin abilities is.