Will new attention brought by graduation coupled with the loss of privileges for some users cause a problem when the site graduates?

Question

I've been reading a bit about Stack Exchange's site model recently, and this answer led me to study up on what graduating means. Specifically, I noticed that the reputation thresholds for privilege levels are higher on graduated sites than this site. The main meta confirms this.

Since privileges aren't grandfathered in when the site graduates, there might be a few users with less than 2000 reputation who review suggested edits/low quality posts now, but will lose that ability once the site graduates, as well as people with less than 10,000 reputation who use the moderator tools now to look for spam or view deleted questions, but will lose that privilege when the site graduates.

Assuming the site gets more attention once it graduates and assuming this attention is coupled with more suggested edits, more spam, etc. could this create a problem? I think the moderators/high-rep users are doing a great job at the moment, but I saw the possibility of more work being put on fewer people so I thought I'd bring it up.

Maybe it just means that instead of x minutes between reviews, there will be 2x minutes between them, and maybe more attention will bring more users to help with these tasks. In those cases, there won't be a problem, I don't think.

Answer 1

Short answer - no. You've got plenty of engaged users at or above the 2 - 3k reputation level that it should not be an issue. Additionally, this site tends to retain engaged users rather well. To put it in perspective, your 10k users don't go a month without visiting the site at least once.

Also, you'll have your first community elected moderation team keeping a watchful eye on things, and you'll elect these folks based partly on the time they spend doing moderation tasks now. I'm certain you'll do a fine job of putting, or keeping some of the most effective members of your community at their post.

Part of our criteria for graduation is to be sure that a site can sustain an election, and determining that naturally brings our focus to what will happen when the privilege scale shifts. If we had any doubt that you could handle it, we would have been much more hesitant. Also, don't forget - we (Stack Exchange) will continue to keep a close eye on things even after you graduate.

I don't think you have anything to worry about :)