I like your division of duties and really don't find anything there to complain about with the idea being to keep it simple. 

Right now in Firearms we have Allan doing strictly News because 1) he has a day job as an outdoor writer that keeps him busy, and 2) in order to get the kind of news cover we want, just doing news in Firearms is job enough. 

Jerry, when he is around, and I cover everything else.  Now our guys won't mess anything up so I'd have no problem whatsoever having Allan with a "Flag 1," even if he wasn't asked to do anything besides news--he's not going to fiddle around with anything. 

From hanging around another forum a couple years ago (when asked to help with some admin issues) it looked like they had an awful lot of staffers and no clearly assigned duties.  If they all had these flags, what could happen, especially as there wasn't a strong hand at the top?  (I mean no personal criticism of anyone by that).

My only other comment would be the ability of the Sysop to give one individual more than one flag.  Also, if a staffer had all three flags, he still wouldn't have Sysop powers to make actual forum changes, home page changes, etc, correct?  I would hope not.