Of the CoC is written and approved by the core team, then I see no issue with enforcement being delegated to a mod team. That’s no different to having separate

Of the CoC is written and approved by the core team, then I see no issue with enforcement being delegated to a mod team. That’s no different to having separate judicial and legislative bodies. One writes the rules, the other enforces them, including enforcing them against the authors of such rules. While the core team could modify the CoC to make their non-compliant behaviour compliant, that would require them to effectively admit to engaging in behaviour that violates the CoC. The rest of the community can vote with their feet on if they believe the CoC is fair, and equally if they believe modifications are fair. But importantly all of these changes happen out in open where they can be scrutinised. > Suppose a member who contributes 90% of new features to the project is "sacked" for an otherwise trivial CoC violation. This subsumes the project into an ideological purity-testing game. Punishment doesn’t have to be all or nothing. A CoC can provide guidance on how moderation is performed, and how punishment is meted out. The CoC should be equally binding on the mod team, as it is anyone else, and the mod team should seek to ensure due process or face replacement. > Accountability here is just that the wider community has visibility on the actions of the core team, and will be up-in-arms if they are seriously unethical. We don’t know the nature of the offence. It quite possible that the victim or victims have requested that the nature of the offence is kept private to prevent retaliation from others. For the mod team to publicly list the offence might cause more injury to the already injured parties. > The innuendo and insistence on their own power above that of the people leading the project... this "is a bad look". If the CoC delegates power of enforcement to them, and CoC has been agreed to by the core team, then the mod team does have power over the core team. But importantly, only in matters covered by the CoC. Just like how members of congress are still subject to law enforcement by the police (or should be).