[Wikipedia-l] Moderation

[Larry Sanger]

I don't much like Ed's suggestion that we moderate people rather than
posts.  With a virtuous few exceptions, most of us have posted things to
the list that would have been rejected by a good moderator.

The idea of having a list of people who need approval first would be
*highly* controversial, and that's controversy we don't need.  We don't
need to give anyone more reason to think that there is a cabal.  I support
treating everyone equal in this regard, even if it means more work for the
moderators.

There is, by the way, one implication of making WikiEN-l moderated but not
Wikipedia-l.  I think it's safe to predict the following sort of
situation.  Some people will no doubt try to post something on Wikien-l
and when it is rejected, they will post it on Wikipedia-l and scream
bloody murder about abuse of power.

This means two things.  First, most importantly, we've got to ensure that
moderators do *not*, in fact, abuse their power.  (Never give the
above-mentioned types legitimate reason to complain.)  The policy has to
be clear and decisions have to be rendered fairly and objectively.
Second, we need to make it clear from the outset that if wikien-l *does*
become moderated, that *does indeed* mean that somebody's going to have
power that they didn't have before.  That in turn means that we have
accepted the associated risks, and a *few* mistakes are perfectly
predictable, and moreover, within the bounds of acceptability.

LP/Camembert wrote:
>> I understand why people want the list moderated - there's been a lot of
tiresome crap on here lately (there usually is). But if you don't want to
read a message, what's wrong with simply deleting it? Everybody can be
their own moderator that way, without having somebody decide what they
should and shouldn't read. <<

The problem is that the noise drives off the signal and even literally
drives off prime producers of signal (e.g., posts from Julie and KQ would
count as signal).  Basically, there are too many children on the list, and
there needs to be a few playground moms, or else the adults will want to
have nothing to do with the list.

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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