On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
You can add to the advantages that it can also produce a "why did you moderate *him*?" response from list members. I got an e-mail from the other user you placed on moderation, and I was puzzled as to why he had been placed on moderation.
Yeah, for sure. Being list moderator is pretty much a no-win game: the best you can hope for is that no one notices your presence. Once someone starts posting in such a way that a few people get annoyed, or they start mildly breaking the list rules, then any action will be divisive. Either leave them unmoderated (continuing to annoy people), moderate them (cop flak for being heavy-handed), etc.
I think that if the person you moderate objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.
Of course.
You can also add "increases transparency".
Good point.
I have no idea how many people are on moderation on this list. Some numbers might help there. I would also ask how many people are subscribed to this list, but that might be rather a low figure. Are there public stats anywhere for this list?
There don't seem to be. The administrative interface doesn't give good stats either, it will only tell you for a given user whether they're on moderation or not. At a guess, somewhere between 20 and 50 users are on moderation, out of 1004 total.
And Thomas' comment:
Personally, I am in favour of such announcements. If you aren't
announcing it publicly, it is an absolute must to inform the affected person privately
Yes. If only because generally you put someone on moderation in order to change their behaviour, so it would be counter-productive not to inform them.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
You can add to the advantages that it can also produce a "why did you moderate *him*?" response from list members. I got an e-mail from the other user you placed on moderation, and I was puzzled as to why he had been placed on moderation.
Yeah, for sure. Being list moderator is pretty much a no-win game: the best you can hope for is that no one notices your presence. Once someone starts posting in such a way that a few people get annoyed, or they start mildly breaking the list rules, then any action will be divisive. Either leave them unmoderated (continuing to annoy people), moderate them (cop flak for being heavy-handed), etc.
List rules should be very few, and they should depend on common sense. And if it's only a question of "mildly" breaking rules doubts should be resolved in favour of the person making the post. There will always be people complaining that the traffic is too high; there was such a complaint recently on the Wikimania-l, and the traffic there is much smaller than what we have here.
When the complaint is about being off-topic, then what exactly is on-topic? Without a clear definition any moderation for this is inevitably subjective, unless the individual insists on continuing the topic ad nauseam. For Jay's post about "music" I had no idea what he was talking about, and maybe few people did; I was content to delete and go on with the next e-mail. Nobody else has addressed the contents of that posting, so it seems that but for the resulting discussion about moderation the thread would have quite rightly died an early death as a one-post thread.
You can also add "increases transparency".
Good point.
And transparency is what protects us from arbitrary and capricious actions.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote
List rules should be very few, and they should depend on common sense. And if it's only a question of "mildly" breaking rules doubts should be resolved in favour of the person making the post.
OTOH this list seems to be improving in the general quality of discussion, and in its breadth of participation. Could be that that the listmods are doing a good job.
Charles
2009/9/22 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
When the complaint is about being off-topic, then what exactly is on-topic? Without a clear definition any moderation for this is inevitably subjective, unless the individual insists on continuing the topic ad nauseam. For Jay's post about "music" I had no idea what he was talking about, and maybe few people did; I was content to delete and go on with the next e-mail. Nobody else has addressed the contents of that posting, so it seems that but for the resulting discussion about moderation the thread would have quite rightly died an early death as a one-post thread.
Rather than speculate, I suggest you look at previous such threads from Jay. They have usually resulted in people asking (in vain) for clarification and complaining about Jay and emails from Jay not understanding why people have a problem with his emails. I think a constructive discussion about moderation policy is better than that.
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that if the person you moderate objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.
Of course.
On that note, whjonson@aol.com has requested that I publicly confirm that he is on moderation.
Steve
Steve confirm the *reason* you put me on moderation. I'm sure that it will be quite interesting.
-----Original Message----- From: Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Sep 22, 2009 1:30 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Moderation (was: Stick this in your music theory and smoke it.)
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
I think that if the person you moderate objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.
Of course.
On that note, whjonson@aol.com has requested that I publicly confirm that he is on moderation.
Steve
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Sure. I enabled your moderation flag because you keep posting large numbers of low-quality posts, despite my requests to the contrary. The specific event that triggered it was your posting of 4 very similar messages to the "Deletion of unreferenced living person biographies" thread, all quibbling over the semantics of whether "speedy deleletion" was equivalent to "out-of-process deletion".
One message probably would have been ok, although it would be better if you'd advanced the discussion, rather than getting stuck on this small point. But 4?
Anyway, please keep making good quality, relevant, interesting posts that help advance discussions about Wikipedia - that's what this list is for.
Steve
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:41 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Steve confirm the *reason* you put me on moderation. I'm sure that it will be quite interesting.
Quality is too subjective, and if I put too many demands on it, then I limit my circle of associates to friends, people whose mother tongue is English, and elderly people who have already learned which points are too insignificant to waste time on in debate. I also lose out on remembering how to explain things that have been clear to me for years, and remembering how I know, in some cases finding out how I know, or learning who else knows. So, before you go judging quality, understand that I am glad someone other than me is not afraid that he will appear foolish if he poses arguments with things he does not understand, because he did not study them formally. I would rather hav that than have people deride entire posts of mine just because nobody answered them. That does not mean nobody listened to my MP3, recognized it, and asked the same questions I did about the numbers. If you are not interested in music, Steve, that is just fine with me, but realize that it almost inevitably figures into your perception of quality. Also realize that I am only a beginner in writing about it.
"Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com wrote in message news:b8ceeef70909221720i2f5d0201o65b7d3ee83527a3a@mail.gmail.com... Sure. I enabled your moderation flag because you keep posting large numbers of low-quality posts, despite my requests to the contrary. The specific event that triggered it was your posting of 4 very similar messages to the "Deletion of unreferenced living person biographies" thread, all quibbling over the semantics of whether "speedy deleletion" was equivalent to "out-of-process deletion".
One message probably would have been ok, although it would be better if you'd advanced the discussion, rather than getting stuck on this small point. But 4?
Anyway, please keep making good quality, relevant, interesting posts that help advance discussions about Wikipedia - that's what this list is for.
Steve
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:41 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Steve confirm the *reason* you put me on moderation. I'm sure that it will be quite interesting.
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