On 23 January 2012 14:53, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On the surface this is a very frivolous post. Funnily enough I have a serious point I have been nursing along for a while. Any list moderators listening? There are times when the mailing list itself can be a source of infighting and internal politics. I submit this is not one of them, and as such, I think modified rules to the soft moderation rules should be adopted. Blatant trolling should get a "one strike and you are on hard moderation" response, and monthly moderation limits should be lifted entirely. We really are on war footing. Not bean-bags at 50 yards footing. We need to sort things out, and more talk is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I'm splitting this out into a new thread, since it's off-topic for the lobbying thread.
The problem with zero tollerance for blatant trolling (which is a policy everyone would agree to) is that there is often a lot of disagreement over what actually constitutes blatant trolling. If you aren't careful, you can end up with more heated debates about moderation than you ever had about the actual controversies that were being discussed.
I agree that more talk is a good thing. The moderation limits serve two purposes - to keep the total volume down and also to avoid a small number of people dominating discussion. I don't think the former is necessarily desirable, but a case can be made for the latter. I suggest the moderation limits be set at 5% of the emails so far in that month (with some common sense applied in the first week or so - obviously the first person to send an email in a month would be at 100% until the next email!). In most months, that would be around 30 emails, but it means that when there is simply a lot of discussion going on people can contribute to it without being unnecessarily silenced half-way through the month.
I was looking at the statistics last night (I'm not too far off 30 posts so far this month, so wanted to keep an eye on it) and apart from two people (who know who they are!) it's currently rare for anyone to go over 30 posts except in particularly busy months. I don't think anyone has actually been put on moderation in those busy months, so the policy might as well reflect actual practice.
When I was brought on board as a list admin/moderator, I was told that it was very much a case of a hands-off approach. This does not mean, however, that anything goes. Usually a reminder, whether one or one or by a post to the list, suffices. Moderation is very much the last step, and has only been necessary in very rare circumstances.
Moderation for exceeding the thirty posts per person per calendar month has not been required in my tenure, despite a couple of months of some very vigorous discussion around the image filter. In that instance, I for one felt that due to the importance and scope of the subject, a hard and fast rule of thirty posts would have been detrimental to an otherwise generally useful conversation.
Alex
2012/1/23 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
On 23 January 2012 14:53, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On the surface this is a very frivolous post. Funnily enough I have a serious point I have been nursing along for a while. Any list moderators listening? There are times when the mailing list itself can be a source of infighting and internal politics. I submit this is not one of them, and as such, I think modified rules to the soft moderation rules should be adopted. Blatant trolling should get a "one strike and you are on hard moderation" response, and monthly moderation limits should be lifted entirely. We really are on war footing. Not bean-bags at 50 yards footing. We need to sort things out, and more talk is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I'm splitting this out into a new thread, since it's off-topic for the lobbying thread.
The problem with zero tollerance for blatant trolling (which is a policy everyone would agree to) is that there is often a lot of disagreement over what actually constitutes blatant trolling. If you aren't careful, you can end up with more heated debates about moderation than you ever had about the actual controversies that were being discussed.
I agree that more talk is a good thing. The moderation limits serve two purposes - to keep the total volume down and also to avoid a small number of people dominating discussion. I don't think the former is necessarily desirable, but a case can be made for the latter. I suggest the moderation limits be set at 5% of the emails so far in that month (with some common sense applied in the first week or so - obviously the first person to send an email in a month would be at 100% until the next email!). In most months, that would be around 30 emails, but it means that when there is simply a lot of discussion going on people can contribute to it without being unnecessarily silenced half-way through the month.
I was looking at the statistics last night (I'm not too far off 30 posts so far this month, so wanted to keep an eye on it) and apart from two people (who know who they are!) it's currently rare for anyone to go over 30 posts except in particularly busy months. I don't think anyone has actually been put on moderation in those busy months, so the policy might as well reflect actual practice.
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