[Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Birgitte SB]

--- On Tue, 9/8/09, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Use of moderation
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 6:05 PM
> In the thread "WMF seeking to
> sub-lease office space?"
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Austin Hair<adhair at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> (to Gregory Kohs)
> [snip]
> >  I've placed you on indefinite
> > moderation with the goal of improving the signal:crazy
> ratio.
> 
> With something like 40 posts made to that thread after Mr.
> Kohs' last
> I think it is clear that the squelching of a (admittedly,
> trigger-happy) critic was ineffective at improving the SNB
> (signal-to-blah) ratio.
> 
> …while at the same time it increased the scent of
> idea-centric rather
> than presentation-centric censorship.
> 
> This is doubly a concern when moderation is used against
> someone who
> made an error that any one of us could have made and jumped
> to some
> hasty conclusions.
> 
> Certainly there are non-profits which are little more than
> fronts for
> their operators' private gains, ones started for that
> purpose, and
> ones which fall into it after years of normal operation. In
> some
> places and at some scales the kind of self-dealing Mr. Kohs
> was
> concerned about are arguably the norm.  I don't
> believe that they
> currently apply to Wikimedia but my confidence is in part
> derived from
> that fact that were there any real evidence of such things
> the critics
> would be all over it.  (I do, however, think Wikimedia
> has done a
> worse job than it could have at avoiding the perception of
> self-dealing)
> 
> Kohs was gleefully pointing at some supposed evidence of
> naughty-naughty. He missed a critical detail which made his
> position
> laughably wrong. I have no doubt that it was an honest
> mistake: in the
> end it only made him look silly. It was a mistake anyone
> could have
> made if they didn't begin by assuming good faith but the
> value of a
> critic is that they start with a different set of
> assumptions and
> values.
> 
> I'm of the view that the further growth and development of
> Wikimedia
> and its family of projects is utterly dependent on having
> solid,
> well-considered, and productively-spoken critics. Internet
> forums are
> highly vulnerable to groupthink: as we work together we
> become a
> family. It's all too easy to avoid thinking critically
> about your
> family and about things you've invested time in. It for
> this reason,
> under other names, that we invite outsiders to serve on our
> board. A
> view from outside of WMF's reality distortion field (and
> from inside
> someone else's RDF) is essential.
> 
> Mr. Kohs is frequently not an ideal critic: by being too
> prone to
> extreme positions, and by falling into accusations, he
> loses
> credibility. But even an off-the-wall critic can help make
> an
> environment more conducive to productive criticism. Someone
> more
> moderate may feel more comfortable speaking up when there
> is a strong
> critic handy to take the unreasonably extreme positions and
> the
> resulting heresy-fire and the existence of someone with an
> extreme
> position can help other people find a common ground.
> 
> I'd prefer that moderation of this list be used as a last
> resort to
> maintain civil discourse and not as a tool to impose an
> external view
> of the desired traffic volume and especially not in a way
> which could
> be construed as prohibiting criticism.  Dealing with
> criticism,
> including occasional off-the-wall criticism and sometimes
> outright
> nutty criticism, is one of the costs of open and
> transparent
> governance.
> 
> I make this post with over a year of consideration: had
> this kind of
> (in my view) heavy-handed moderation been effective at
> improving the
> discourse on this list, I would be left with little to
> say.  I don't
> think anyone here can say that it has improved. As such,
> it's time to
> try something different.
> 

I agree completely with Mr. Maxwell (we seem to have too many Gregory's on this topic) about the usefulness of critics and inappropriateness of using moderation to suppress criticism.   When Mr. Kohs was first moderated, I was not at all concerned.  I had just previously contacted him off-list to try and influence him to alter the tone of his emails while still continuing to share his substantive message. He complained to me of the moderation as suppression right away.  I dismissed him, saying he had given plenty of reason for being moderated by the style of his emails and that I saw no reason to believe he was being suppressed as I was sick enough of his style to stop reading him for this reason alone.  I told him that he could expect his messages to passed on through moderation if he altered his tone, and if he proved to maintain this change he should expect to be taken off moderation.  I was confident in my understanding of how we all felt here to set
 these expectations solely from my own speculation.  I thought Mr. Kohs was making moderation out to be more than it was.  I thought we were using it as a tool to bring him around to the acceptable tenor of conversation on this list.  I still hope that those initial thoughts were correct and there been merely an error of execution in this case.  But I am now concerned that this moderation was to be applied as Mr. Maxwell describes above rather than as I explained to Mr. Kohs off-list.  Mr. Kohs has shared with me that a message he sent to the list was rejected by the moderators with "No reason given" (I suppose this what the program generates when the field is left blank). And despite his request for clarification he assures me that he still has not been given any information by the moderators about how they mean to judge his e-mails as acceptable to be sent on to the list. So he has been left blindly guess what they might find appropriate enough to send
 through. Whether it might be his tone (which I found so problematic), or the subject, or perhaps even the position taken on a subject.  Moderation can be useful tool, when those who cross the lines are given adequate information on what we find acceptable and how we expect them to change.  It is an inappropriate tool to use to suppress anyone's contributions without explanation and requires better communication than has happened here.  

Birgitte SB