[WikiEN-l] My proposal

[The Cunctator]

On 12/13/02 6:15 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> 
> Suppose we commit to a very light moderation, by me, which you said
> you could accept, with others helping out by doing approvals of posts.
> AND we commit to setting up and testing a bbs system as you've
> proposed several times in the past.
> 
> We experiment -- wikien-l becomes moderated.  wikipedia-l stays
> unmoderated and migrates to a bbs/email system.  We later revisit the
> issue (March 1st, I propose) and see how it's working out in practice.

We can try that, but I'm not sure what good that would do. A lot of it
depends on who the approvers are. Their biases/likes would determine who
would participate, and what kind of participation that would be. And by
creating a contrast between wikipedia-l and wikien-l we're implying that
they're somehow different in tone and content, rather than focus.

One thing: we've had a lot of call for moderation, but little explication of
what the direct issues are that moderation would solve. What exactly are
these problems?

There would need to be a clear determination beforehand of what will be
moderated. And things like "no personal attacks" are too vague to be a clear
moderation guideline. Even "avoid topical discussion" is hard, because some
degree of appeal to specific entries/topics is necessary for discussion of
broad points.

Ed Poor brought up the "If a single veto were to derail..." If a single veto
were to derail this, I'd be happy to veto it. But I don't expect or really
want that to be the case. I will tell you why I think this is a bad idea.
But direct experience is a better teacher.

I think what would make more sense is for someone/a group of people to
moderate a "best-of" list, in which posts from wikipedia-l or wikien-l, say
no more than 5 or 10 a day? maybe fewer? would be forwarded. Replies to the
posts would go back to wikipedia-l or wikien-l.

Certainly, if we decide to go forward with list moderation, I'll try to help
find the best form of it, but that won't mean I'll think it's a good idea.