On 9/6/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On 9/5/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
David, what is a nuisance, a pain, or rubbish to you, may not be to me.
on 9/5/07 3:23 PM, Michael Noda at michael.noda@gmail.com wrote:
While this is true, I think this thread has shown pretty clearly that you are a fairly far outlier in terms of your social expectations. Not that this is a bad thing, but it would be unwise to expect the list to change to meet those expectations, at least while the general consensus remains as it is.
If your proposals are accepted, and the mailing list becomes disagreeable to the majority of its active users (as they have indicated it would), to the point that they leave and go elsewhere, *what has been gained?* This sort of thinking, elevating pragmatics over principle in all but a few cases, has been enshrined in the project since the beginning, in the form of [[Wikipedia:Ignore all rules]], and that spirit continues to inform the vast majority (one hopes!) of the community.
Michael,
I receive many, many private emails from Members of this List Community every day. The great majority of these persons are NOT banned or moderated Members; but who fear ending up that way if they voice their opinions.
That is what drives me.
That comes as a surprise to me; as I said elsewhere, we mods are very lenient when it comes to moderating people and approving messages from those on moderation. (Also, hardly anybody is actually banned from the list, as far as I know - I think I've only banned someone once, when the person posted nothing helpful at all to the list.)
David Gerard said in the same thread I referred to that we're meant to be a last resort; people who are banned from Wikipedia post here. As a result, we have much lower standards than the English Wikipedia for moderation or banning.
Dialogue is crucial; I personally would like to engage those who fear they will be moderated, because I cannot think of a reason they would fear that unless they actually intend to contribute nothing more than the same things as those presently on moderation - most of whom are on it for good reason.
I would also add that speaking in vague abstract generalities is not very helpful or conducive to a resolution of this problem; we need to know just whats, whys, etc. of these fears. Feel free to disagree with me all you like, but I find we're very tolerant of a lot of crap spewed onto the list - even those on moderation often have their messages approved.
Johnleemk