Well, once the "liaison" or "community proxy" is chosen, that issue will be solved. Steps do seem to be being made in the correct direction, just slowly.
I'm not sure one person is going to be able to solve this issue especially given they won't have any real power. Personally I would say that there need to be the following setup (closely based on chadz' previously posted setup).
1) Head of Support
Role:
- Appointing and monitoring Admins, Moderators and Technical Support officers
- Prioritization of bugs to be fixed by devs with the authority to ask for urgent fixes
- designing the processes by which Admins, Moderators and Tech Support officers work
- requesting coded processes from devs if absolutely needed
Numbers: 1
2) Admins (still with Head Admins)
Role:
- handling bans, unbans and other punishments
- policing irc, forums and servers
- helping new players
- reporting bugs
Numbers: 5-10?
3) Moderators
Role:
- helping new players
- policing irc, forums and servers
- reporting issues to admins for further action if needed
- reporting bugs
Numbers: lots, the more the better
4) Technical Support
Role:
- fixing technical issues
- name changes
- offering advice for players having technical difficulties
- reporting bugs
Numbers: 4-6
You will notice that the day to day stuff is handled by the roles with lots of people doing the work. The Head role is more of a liaising, monitoring and fire fighting role. They have no extra powers so if they go on holiday or afk, a designated deputy can take their place temporarily.
Everything to do with new features and patches is then handled by the dev team (& item balancers) and its up to the devs to continue reading forums for good ideas. Devs don't get involved in admin decisions though. With enough time and discipline sticking to roles, I would hope that the devs can start posting a bit more in the forums without being hounded over admin and bug fix decisions
