Where to even start...
Division of Labor
I think the members of HiveWatchers are overextended. They are expected to fulfill roles beyond investigating, etc. I like how there are community liaisons in the Discord, but the bulk of the work is still carried out by the same few members.
Not only is that inefficient, it sometimes break down into a text shouting match. More often than not, concerns aren't addressed in a timely manner due to time restraints. I'm sure you have already seen the times when people were left hanging for hours after showing up to plead for their cases.
Consider outsourcing/expand a bit so that process can go smoother. You need dedicated personnel to handle blacklisted persons. And all the information the handlers need should be readily available, so they don't need to bother the main HiveWatchers unless they need clarifications.
Scope
The scope will take some time to iron out the details. But, the idea is to curb exploitative behavior. Ideally, the witnesses would monitor some of these cases and think of ways to mitigate those behaviors at the base layer. The reward curve, RC, etc. were such efforts.
Enforcing the scope is another. Consistency has always been difficult in anti-abuse. And I'm not talking about interpretation of what is considered abusive. Resentment builds when people see someone outside of HW radar due to some sort of privilege. The privileges could be based on stake, connections, social status, etc. I don't think people expect you to catch every offender, but every offender should receive the same treatment.
The scope also needs to be flexible enough to adapt to changing Hive-scape. I remember that SteemCleaners didn't touch YouTube video copy/paste at all for a while. Those weren't people sharing an occasional video, but posts after posts, multiple times a day to farm upvotes.
Funding
Like I mentioned in a poll a while ago, there are stakeholders who would love to see HW get off the funding solely through upvotes approach.
To be frank, if the community isn't willing to let the Spaminator proposal pass, then they don't deserve to feel disdain for the rewards HW claims from the reward pool. Clearly, it's not important enough for people to care. The only way HW requires no funding is either due to a generous donor or everyone starts to actually use their free downvotes to counteract exploitative behavior. Of which, neither is likely.
The next question is, are members of HW considered full-time positions? If so, then it should be reasonable that the budget includes livable wages. Even if they are considered part-time positions, they should be compensated. Whether or not the compensation should take geographic location into account is another story.
A bigger question is how those funds would be handled. Are there any escrow or whatever to help with that? How would funds be distributed? How do we hold the team accountable? It might be better to start thinking about those things.
The biggest question is how would HW receive the stake needed to counter abuse? Does that mean communicating with willing stakeholders? Renting HP with funds? Establish some sort of downvote trail? There are no large amounts of freebie delegations laying around this time.
I'm just scratching the surface here. It goes much deeper than the superficial elements I've mentioned in this long comment.
I would do a tl;dr, but it's kinda hard to do without them coming out weird at the moment.
You're emphasizing documentation, which is spot on. I'm taking everything you've said into account for inclusion in the future and you'll see some of it actioned sooner rather than later. Thanks for taking the time to write it all out. When you said you were writing a post in a comment I didn't expect you to be this thorough.
It's a shit ton of "paperwork" that nobody wants to do, but needs to be done.
I shall look forward to the changes.
Increasing the number of members within the team, and consequently having more opinions, could solve the problem of coherence. Remember that we are on a decentralized platform and speaking of a very important project I think it is right and necessary to have a wider comparison pool. If arguing with a person deprived of the opportunity to participate within the server or from, I think it is really difficult then to have the consent of the community and not just of a few stakeholders.
That's if they do plead their case at all. For some of us that would mean to doxx ourself on discord or create an extra discord account just for that one purpose.
Or, you could always create a new Hive account.
Plenty of options there.