[Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Gregory Maxwell]

In the thread "WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?"
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Austin Hair<adhair at gmail.com> wrote:
(to Gregory Kohs)
[snip]
>  I've placed you on indefinite
> moderation with the goal of improving the signal:crazy ratio.

With something like 40 posts made to that thread after Mr. Kohs' last
I think it is clear that the squelching of a (admittedly,
trigger-happy) critic was ineffective at improving the SNB
(signal-to-blah) ratio.

…while at the same time it increased the scent of idea-centric rather
than presentation-centric censorship.

This is doubly a concern when moderation is used against someone who
made an error that any one of us could have made and jumped to some
hasty conclusions.

Certainly there are non-profits which are little more than fronts for
their operators' private gains, ones started for that purpose, and
ones which fall into it after years of normal operation. In some
places and at some scales the kind of self-dealing Mr. Kohs was
concerned about are arguably the norm.  I don't believe that they
currently apply to Wikimedia but my confidence is in part derived from
that fact that were there any real evidence of such things the critics
would be all over it.  (I do, however, think Wikimedia has done a
worse job than it could have at avoiding the perception of
self-dealing)

Kohs was gleefully pointing at some supposed evidence of
naughty-naughty. He missed a critical detail which made his position
laughably wrong. I have no doubt that it was an honest mistake: in the
end it only made him look silly. It was a mistake anyone could have
made if they didn't begin by assuming good faith but the value of a
critic is that they start with a different set of assumptions and
values.

I'm of the view that the further growth and development of Wikimedia
and its family of projects is utterly dependent on having solid,
well-considered, and productively-spoken critics. Internet forums are
highly vulnerable to groupthink: as we work together we become a
family. It's all too easy to avoid thinking critically about your
family and about things you've invested time in. It for this reason,
under other names, that we invite outsiders to serve on our board. A
view from outside of WMF's reality distortion field (and from inside
someone else's RDF) is essential.

Mr. Kohs is frequently not an ideal critic: by being too prone to
extreme positions, and by falling into accusations, he loses
credibility. But even an off-the-wall critic can help make an
environment more conducive to productive criticism. Someone more
moderate may feel more comfortable speaking up when there is a strong
critic handy to take the unreasonably extreme positions and the
resulting heresy-fire and the existence of someone with an extreme
position can help other people find a common ground.

I'd prefer that moderation of this list be used as a last resort to
maintain civil discourse and not as a tool to impose an external view
of the desired traffic volume and especially not in a way which could
be construed as prohibiting criticism.  Dealing with criticism,
including occasional off-the-wall criticism and sometimes outright
nutty criticism, is one of the costs of open and transparent
governance.

I make this post with over a year of consideration: had this kind of
(in my view) heavy-handed moderation been effective at improving the
discourse on this list, I would be left with little to say.  I don't
think anyone here can say that it has improved. As such, it's time to
try something different.