[Wikipedia-l] Moderation

[Larry Sanger]

Jimbo wrote:

>> I'm not really supportive of the idea, either.  Maybe there should be a
moderated list for announcements or what have you, or someone could put
together and offer an edited digest of this list, but I prefer the
vibrancy and speed we have here, and that's hard to replicate in a
moderated list. <<

I thought you'd have this reaction, and I agreed with you when we first
set up Wikipedia-l that it should be unmoderated.

We have a lot of things we *need* to talk about and moreover to *do* on
Wikipedia.  There are people who are constantly disrupting this work in
various ways that have made me and a lot of other people want to stay off.
But, like moths to the flame, we come back--because we rightly don't want
to abandon the project to the disruptors.  Of course, some amount of
disruption (depending on exactly what we mean by this) is healthy.  You
could say that I think we are way too robust in this regard.

I'm guessing your concern is that moderation would make the project less
open.  And who can deny that moderating the list makes the project
slightly less open, and that indeed that is a bad thing.  I totally agree
with that.  But alas it also appears to be a necessary thing, or so I
think, which is why I call it a "necessary evil."  If we keep our
moderators properly reined in (by making sure they have a set of rules
that they are to follow), I think we can minimize the damage in this
regard.

Remember, you were a great moderator of a list in the distant past, Jimbo,
and it's safe to say that it was your moderatorship that made it the great
list it was.

>> Mostly, I think people should just relax a notch or two.  :-) Before
each post, ask yourself if you are on the path to slack.  If not, don't
post. <<

Wise advice but giving such advice is a solution only as long as people
are inclined take it.  Surely the last many months have made it clear that
they're not.  Would that we were all as relaxed as you, KQ, Magnus, and
many others sitting in embarrassed silence while the more tightly-wound
among us make fools of ourselves.

You are a very relaxed person (he really is, folks!), and you to your
credit can often not see what all the fuss is in our flame wars or
debates.  But this doesn't really help those of us who are in the middle
of flame wars that you would, again to your credit, never get involved in.
I think we need a better solution.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the
obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
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