[Foundation-l] Reply to Mark

[Austin Hair]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 5:51 PM, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/02/2008, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > Let's be clear: you killfiled a thread critical of the foundation,
>  >  that was ongoing and was at present constructive and unoffensive (with
>  >  any nastiness long since past), that was being responded to by
>  >  Florence,  and was relevant to this list. This is the kind of heavy-
>  >  handed moderation that brings up allegations of censorship.  Please be
>  >  more hands-off and not step in with moderation when there is no problem.
>
>  And if the killfile was legitimate, why didn't you tell anyone until
>  15 hours after you did it? Quite a few list regulars were involved, it
>  seems like basic respect to tell them that you did this.

For some reason, Dan's e-mails were being filed as spam, so I
apologize for not replying him directly.

Foundation-l administrative actions are usually done quietly, and for
the most part nobody notices.  If you've just made some inflammatory
comments and suddenly find that your posts are taking an hour or two
to make it to the list, it's because we've flagged you for moderation
and are reviewing your posts before allowing them through.  It's in
this way that we try to enforce some semblance of civil discussion,
and many have said that we still don't do enough.

>From time to time, a thread spirals out of control and simply isn't
productive.  These threads are largely what has led Foundation
officials to decry this list as "useless" or even "crap."  That
Florence continued to indulge certain posts with a response did not
affect my judgment that this particular thread had outlived its
usefulness and, though certain points were worthy of attention, should
have been brought up in a different way and/or in a different medium.
It had absolutely nothing to do with certain posts being critical of
the Board or anyone else, because, to be frank, it's not my job to act
in their interests here.

I'm not going to address issues of "legitimacy" or "censorship," but I
will say that I normally do give notice of a killed thread, which
happens perhaps once a month.  I didn't do that here, simply because I
forgot, and I apologize for the confusion that caused.

Austin