Okay, first off, Roget, if you're going to do something this big, you need to talk to other members of staff. Specifically the admins, since we are in theory running the site. You definitely need to get our okay on this before you send out PMs to people off-site saying "Who wants to be a member of site staff?"
Look, we're trying to give Team Captains more latitude, and it's good that you're trying to take initiative.
But this is a pretty far overreach of the power we've given you. Especially given that to the best of my knowledge, you didn't consult with a single admin on this. This would be a fundamental change in the way we do business. Similar to the change Troy came up with a month ago. The one that he laid out for feedback, looking for other people's ideas before going forward. Like, if we admins had come up with this change of yours? People would be annoyed that we hadn't asked anyone else first.
We said that you, you personally, could select junior staff for IO. Not Blaroth, not Kens, not Chris, not Vivax. Not because we don't trust them, but because it's your job, not theirs. If you think it's too difficult to look them up yourself, it's probably going to be too difficult to look into them to the degree we need you to before they can be made junior staff.
Now, if you want them to suggest people to you, and then you go, look at them for a while, see what they've done, and then decide they're good? That's okay. But your proposal puts too much emphasis on them picking them. We need to be sure you aren't just rubber stamping this.
Here's the issue. Every member of junior staff represents us. When they become staff, even junior staff, they represent the wiki. We've had a huge issue with people thinking we're assholes because of people we've had on staff. That's half the reason Internet Outreach exists. We need to be careful who we appoint. This becomes especially difficult when you aren't even speaking the language they operate on in many of these off-site communities.
And the PM you sent doesn't say "Send us some possible names to become junior staff members." Your message implies that they will definitely be junior staff, whoever they select. What if they select someone you aren't willing to accept? Maybe they have a twelve-year-old on staff, because they have different age limits. We're not going to accept a twelve-year-old to be staff, even if they are highly recommended. What are you going to tell them? "Whoops, sorry, meant to say with some caveats."
This isn't "Send us some people for me to look over so I can vet them," this is "Please pick some staff members for us."
Now, if you want to get people from other sites into 05, so they can talk to us about their concerns, or discuss changes to the site here? That's not a problem. They don't have to be staff to have a voice.
I get that some of these seem like really fine points, but we want to be careful who we actually have representing us. And you need to run anything this big past the admins first before you make a unilateral change.
