This is one of those topics where it's easy to get emotional, and will always be a bit divisive.
My own thoughts are that there is a definite role for Hivewatchers (or some equivalent, whatever the name), but that it should be allowed to evolve as Hive scales.
I think that the evolution should be to take some of the workload away, by making the communities the first line of defence when it comes to moderation. Yes, there will need to be some training and tools provided to the community moderators.
Hivewatchers then evolves to be a route for appeal, either because users feel a community moderator is acting from personal ire rather than technical violation, or because they really don't agree with the grounds of a moderation decision (again, for technical reasons, not just because they're annoyed if they got genuinely caught !) Hivewatchers would also be enabled to step in for posts placed purely on a personal blog as a way to avoid community moderation, or placed on an abandoned community where a moderator is no longer present.
This is just an idea; it would probably need some development work, but would hopefully spread the workload as Hive grows and help avoid the perception that moderators are basing decisions on emotion rather than technical rules.
Personally I believe this is the natural evolution. There will come a time (I have no idea when) where the communities will be the focus of most people. There are more tools available to the communities. They can create their own blacklists and ways to police people who try to spam their sites and bilk rewards.
At that point, Hive is policed by layer 2 moderation. It wont be perfect but it might remove some of the major issues.
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