Marc Riddell wrote:
on 9/2/07 5:52 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not sure why you'd need to know. Any reason? People are usually moderated for good reason.
Just for the sake of transparency, I guess.
Yes! If this List, much less the Project, is to maintain any credibility, and the confidence of its Community, it has got to remain open, fair and honest to all. Secrecy breeds suspicion, which breeds distrust. I have never blindly followed anyone. And too many people have ended up in my therapy room for having done just that.
I do have mixed feelings on this because it is a question of conflicting values. Both privacy rights and operational transparency are important. Still it is not enough to say that we must trust somebody simply because he is in a position of leadership. Most people in that position will not abuse the position, but occasionally some do, or perhaps we need sound data so that the community can determine whether the underlying policy is correct.
We don't need a list of the dedicated spammers; that would be too boring. We don't need to know the names of the list newcomers who start with a clearly offensive or overly aggressive post, though some statistics would be interesting. I would still be more sympathetic to knowing about what happens to people who were already list members, and who went over some kind of line. This is where the community may have a different opinion about the punishment. Perhaps the affected person should have some input into whether the action should be kept confidential.
Ec