The Difficulty of Source Level Blocking

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

>One problem that hasn't been addressed is the social one: how do people
>choose moderators?  

I'm not convinced this needs to be decided up front.  For the first
such group, whoever hosts the ratings site can decide who gets to
moderate.  A benign autocrat is ideal in this case.

The lessons of experience will be needed to decide how to do the
second and subsequent groups.  One of the reasons I outlined a broad
framework for distributed moderation is that we really can't tell in
advance what systems will be desirable, and whatever it is, it will
likely vary from group to group.

We will eventually need to figure out a way to have multiple groups
with the same topic but with different moderation techniques.
Fractious bickering will cause schisms, and creating namespace turf to
fight over is counterproductive when there need not be such a problem.

This is one of the reasons I suggested using a separate newsgroup for
rating/voting, to support multiple moderation groups.

On voting for a moderator:

>Any other one, unfortunately, tends to bring up cries of
>"Usenet cabal" very quickly.  

I say fine, let them cry.  It would be impolitic to take over and
monopolize a particular topic, so that if there are complaints about
the moderated group, there's always another place to go.

This is another reason to think about how to do multiple moderation,
which is to say to the whiners "put up or shut up".

Eric