[WikiEN-l] Moderation (was: Stick this in your music theory and smoke it.)

[Steve Bennett]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> You can add to the advantages that it can also produce a "why did you
> moderate *him*?" response from list members. I got an e-mail from the
> other user you placed on moderation, and I was puzzled as to why he
> had been placed on moderation.

Yeah, for sure. Being list moderator is pretty much a no-win game: the
best you can hope for is that no one notices your presence. Once
someone starts posting in such a way that a few people get annoyed, or
they start mildly breaking the list rules, then any action will be
divisive. Either leave them unmoderated (continuing to annoy people),
moderate them (cop flak for being heavy-handed), etc.

> I think that if the person you moderate
> objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.

Of course.

> You can also add "increases transparency".

Good point.

> I have no idea how many people are on moderation on this list. Some
> numbers might help there. I would also ask how many people are
> subscribed to this list, but that might be rather a low figure. Are
> there public stats anywhere for this list?

There don't seem to be. The administrative interface doesn't give good
stats either, it will only tell you for a given user whether they're
on moderation or not. At a guess, somewhere between 20 and 50 users
are on moderation, out of 1004 total.

And Thomas' comment:
>Personally, I am in favour of such announcements. If you aren't
announcing it publicly, it is an absolute must to inform the affected
person privately

Yes. If only because generally you put someone on moderation in order
to change their behaviour, so it would be counter-productive not to
inform them.

Steve