[Foundation-l] Moderation and this list

[SJ Klein]

Birgitte SB wrote:
>> This all sounds nice, however you are truly judging
>> this as reciprocal we have already lost.  While those
>> people representing WMF are inherently some of the
>> best people on this list, the "reciprocating" group is
>> open to anyone.  There will always be bitter,
>> mean-spirited people around.  If lack of transparency
>> is really due to these things, lets increase the
>> moderation to a level where there is enough kindness
>> to warrant transparency.  Otherwise everyone will just
>> continue to be held hostage by lowest common
>> denominator.

Open communities have always had their openness and goodwill tested by 
emotional, clueless, suspicious, and irritable community members, who 
naturally put other people off (both intentionally and not); as well as
by intentional trolls, manipulative people, and sowers if ill will.

Wikipedia was built on a foundation of such people (yes, even clueless 
people -- and they don't remain cluelss for long when you welcome them ;).
We are lucky to have problems of primarily the former type on this list -- 
even our trolls tend to be people who support the community's mission in
some fashion; not people who are here because they stumbled across it and
want attention.

So I am really sad when I see longtime contributors who no longer read the 
-en list because it offends them so much; or who see this list as a sewer.
We have to remedy this; hopefully without raising the barrier to 
participation.

People are hesitant to moderate because noone wants to censor discussion 
or prevent people from expressing valid perspectives.  This is good. 
Let's increase /mediation/, not what we call list 'moderation' (blocking 
list contributors).  The best community solutions to such situations that 
I have seen had skilled mediators to step in where there was serious 
argument.  I value the discussions we have on this list very much, and 
hope that we will find alternatives to giving up on sharing ideas here.

Are there any mediators out there willing to take on [part of] a list?
(perhaps even some of our current list mods?)

SJ