--- SJ Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
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
Moderation does not necessarily mean *blocking*. Inappropriate posts can be returned to the sender asking them to rephrase their concerns into a more appropriate tone. Or if the problem posts are just "pot-shots", the sender can be asked try again by contributing something more substantial on the issue without the personal remarks. If you don't trust the current moderators so let through subsequent posts from potentially moderated contributors, perhaps you would be willing to volunteer becoming a moderator yourself. I would certainly trust your judgment.
Birgitte SB
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