Toby Bartels wrote:
That said, however, Cunc is still a valid voice on the side that says (in essence) that we shouldn't have any moderation -- a side that also includes me, Matthew Woodcraft, and Jimbo himself (to varying degrees of strength -- Jimbo won't fight it if the rest want it, Cunc would accept moderation by Jimbo, and I think so would I). Whether we should moderate, and who should moderate, are separate issues, but the latter does become moot if the former is decided negatively.
What do you think of my idea of my selecting a board of "approvers" who don't reject posts, and then me logging in once a day (at least) to handle the rest? This shouldn't burden my time unnecessarily, nor should it slow the list down much, if we have enough approvers to keep things moving along reasonably well.
The approvers would accept anything they think is good, but would not reject anything. If they don't like something, they just leave it in the queue. From there, I deal with it, either by posting it (likely, I think, in many cases) or by rejecting it (with encouragement to tone down the hostility or similar).
This is actually better for the "no moderation" crowd because even I don't really have straight rejection power (usually) because any other moderator could well approve things before I even see them.
It seems like this would satisfy you and Cunc, even better than if I were a pure moderator, and possibly Matthew Woodcraft, too.
Additionally, those who accept the idea of moderation but have concern about the particular moderators will likely be more accepting if the moderators are only approving without rejecting. No single moderator would have the ability to prevent a post from being posted. Any moderator who bothers to log in can approve anything.
Two other thoughts: we're only talking about wikiEN-l, not the general policy list. And we can consider this an experiment. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We can see how it goes and talk about it on March 1.
--Jimbo