On 12/13/02 1:25 PM, "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
on 12/13/02 11:06 AM, The Cunctator at cunctator@kband.com wrote:
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.
Hopefully the moderators will consciously suspend their bias (those that they are aware of) and hopefully Jimbo will choose folks who have some self-awareness. This ought not be a way to continue the struggle by other means. It should be a list issue if that is the behavior we see.
It's the biases they're not aware of that are the problem. The simplest mechanism for tackling these biases is putting every decision made by the moderators to the light. If someone's post is blocked or delayed, they (and possibly everyone) should know who made the decision (and possibly why).
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.
Like pornography, one knows it when one sees it, a typical attack will generally include "stupid" blah blah, scatological references etc. Posts on topics are the same, when they start getting into the details, the debated issues, we all know it belongs on the discussion page of the article.
Pardon me for saying it, but the U.S. judicial standard on pornography is not the kind of standard that we should be using. We don't need to emulate the braindead handling of sex and pornography in the U.S.
Rather, if we *can't* explicate clear guidelines of what is not acceptable, then we shouldn't be moderating. I'm not saying that all judgment should be removed, but that such judgment should be clearly defined.