How many Elves would be too many?

[annemehr]

Jen Reese wrote:
> In talking about the surge of new members expected after the POA 
> movie, and then when the next book is released, several people 
> mentioned adding Elves to handle the inreased volume. I'm just 
> wondering, from an Elf perspective--can it reach a point where there 
> are too many Elves to make decisions by consensus? That's my 
> understanding of the process now, group decision-making by 
> consensus, which seems like a great way to do things.
<snip>

Annemehr:
I was just thinking about the same thing (an example of great minds
thinking alike, obviously).

I'm wondering if there's any feasible way of adding "Temp Elves"
during a really big surge like the one we had at the OoP release. 
They could be kept on only until post volume drops back to a "normal"
level, and could be trained and used in only one certain aspect of
list management, if that's possible.  For instance, they could each be
assigned a block of time (e.g. midnight to noon on Mondays) to read
every message on the list and send "gentle reminders" to those who
stray too far from posting guidlines.  These Temp Elves would not be
true elves and would not be involved in any other aspect of running
the list (e.g. answering e-mails to the Admin. team or discussing policy).

I guess this is slightly reminiscent of the old Mod/Elf/Geist system,
where you had tiers in the admin. team, and IIRC the Geists were
always free to send the "list policy" reminders when needed.

It's just that, since the surges are so temporary, maybe you only need
a temporary solution to the unique problems they cause.

Annemehr