[Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Austin Hair]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Gregory Maxwell<gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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, Greg.  Moderation obviously doesn't solve the underlying
problem; it's unevenly applied, and seldom fair to the parties
involved.  I try to avoid it, and limit moderation to cases of blatant
incivility and/or ridiculousness.  A fair bit of trolling is put up
with, as long as there's a purpose—Anthony has this down to an art.

In Buenos Aires I had multiple people ask (even practically beg) me to
do something about foundation-l.  One person said "fucking moderate
foundation-l, already!"—to which I explained why I didn't think that
moderating individuals was a solution, but had to admit that I didn't
really have a better one.

I've created http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l for
brainstorming of how to make this list a little bit less of a
cesspool.  Please feel free to ignore the initial thoughts I banged
out as a starting point and refactor as you will.  If there's
consensus on a better model, I'll happily implement it; even if there
isn't, at least getting more people's thoughts on the matter is a
start.

As for Greg Kohs, what finally got him moderated was the way he
reacted to the ongoing thread once his hasty conclusions were proven,
er, misguided.  Being nasty and uncivil isn't the only way to find
yourself moderated; few people are interested in having a thread be
drawn out for another week after it's descended to the point of
absurdity.

Austin