On 12/13/02 6:15 AM, "Jimmy Wales" jwales@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.