[WikiEN-l] Who's moderated?

[Steve Bennett]

On 9/7/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> All of us that are not list moderators suffer from ignorance. We don't
> know what is prevented from reaching the list. We don't know how much

We don't filter much out. Less than 1% of messages, probably. And
because we don't want to be accused of being the Cabal, we err on the
side of inclusion.

Of course there is a huge amount of actual spam sent to this list, but
that's a separate problem.

> junk is filtered out. We don't know how many messages from moderated
> users are filtered out, nor do we know the nature of those moderated
> messages.

It's not very exciting. It's mostly just a continuation of rants which
started on the list, but that everyone eventually tired of. You know,
3 months later and someone's still complaining about having been
blocked.

> If we're in a suspicious mood, we might imagine that the moderators are
> suppressing opinions they don't agree with. Let me rush to say that I
> don't tend towards suspiciousness, at least with the moderators of this
> list. I'm just pointing out that lack of knowledge can breed suspicion
> and fear.

If this was the case, it wouldn't be hard for aggrieved parties to
complain, perhaps by personally emailing other contributors on the
list. If they thought only one moderator was at fault, they could
email wikien-l-owner, so we could all see what was going on.

> Just dreaming for a moment, without thought as to implementation
> details, it would be instructive to have a place where any list members
> (only) could go and see what is *not* published to the list. This would
> give information to those that desire it, provide a sort of "check" for
> the moderators, and still keep the list free from garbage.

Yeah, but you'd still be trusting the moderators to set that up,
wouldn't you? Besides, most of that junk is somewhat abusive, if not
downright libellous.

Steve