Designated moderation is a pretty poor system. Everyone knows who the dickheads are; you just have to leverage that communal knowledge---but in a way that avoids oppressive majorities.
Have a system whereby any user can indicate zero or more other users to be their personal moderators.
This is kept secret by the site; nobody has any idea of how many other people have selected them as one of their personal moderators, other than by leaking that information.
Then have a rule like this: if some (configurable) number of your personal moderators block some post or account, you also automatically block that post or account.
The automatic block doesn't count as a moderating action on your behalf, with respect to those who have selected you as their personal moderator; it's a second-order block.
This could result in a reasonable blend between the classic opposites: someone else deciding for you what you shouldn't read, or else you having to do all the work. The former model represented by moderated forums like Reddit, or moderated mailing lists or Usenet newsgroups, and the latter represented by unmoderated Usenet newsgroups where it's just you and your personal killfile.
Users should have some sort of statistics dashboard to determine roughly much they are not seeing due to which personal moderators.
Personal moderators could be divided into classes. If someone is your class 1 personal moderator, then if they block something, you don't see it. If three class 2 moderators of yours block something, you don't see it. And if seven class 3 moderators block something, you don't see it.
On any user you see, you can pick them to be your class 1, 2 or 3 moderator.
These designations could have an expiry date, otherwise people will "set and forget", and popular users will amass a lot of power to block. E.g. if everyone in a forum chooses you as a personal class 1 mod, you basically decide what that forum doesn't read. That could be a poorly informed choice on their behalf, which would be somewhat mitigated by expiry.
There could be some expiry workflow. On your first visit to the site on a given day, you're reminded of expired personal moderators: would you like to grant them an extension or drop them?
Have a system whereby any user can indicate zero or more other users to be their personal moderators.
This is kept secret by the site; nobody has any idea of how many other people have selected them as one of their personal moderators, other than by leaking that information.
Then have a rule like this: if some (configurable) number of your personal moderators block some post or account, you also automatically block that post or account.
The automatic block doesn't count as a moderating action on your behalf, with respect to those who have selected you as their personal moderator; it's a second-order block.
This could result in a reasonable blend between the classic opposites: someone else deciding for you what you shouldn't read, or else you having to do all the work. The former model represented by moderated forums like Reddit, or moderated mailing lists or Usenet newsgroups, and the latter represented by unmoderated Usenet newsgroups where it's just you and your personal killfile.
Users should have some sort of statistics dashboard to determine roughly much they are not seeing due to which personal moderators.
Personal moderators could be divided into classes. If someone is your class 1 personal moderator, then if they block something, you don't see it. If three class 2 moderators of yours block something, you don't see it. And if seven class 3 moderators block something, you don't see it.
On any user you see, you can pick them to be your class 1, 2 or 3 moderator.
These designations could have an expiry date, otherwise people will "set and forget", and popular users will amass a lot of power to block. E.g. if everyone in a forum chooses you as a personal class 1 mod, you basically decide what that forum doesn't read. That could be a poorly informed choice on their behalf, which would be somewhat mitigated by expiry.
There could be some expiry workflow. On your first visit to the site on a given day, you're reminded of expired personal moderators: would you like to grant them an extension or drop them?