Re: Sandy and I will run a cypherpunks "moderation" experiment in Jan

[ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)]

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:
> > You gave us another example of why charters that restrict moderators'
> > ability to reject posts are good. In soc.culture.russian.moderated
> > we had a similar problem (now resolved completely), when certain anonymous
> > posters posted articles that looked like articles from newspapers.
> 
> Since not a lot of people on this list read soc.culture.*, I'll give a
> slightly different view of how Igor's moderation works in practice.
> 
> The charter of s.c.r.m prohibits flames and gratuitous obscenities.
> However this rule is not enforced.  Certain friends of Igor (including
> some of the s.c.r.m moderators) habitually cross-post articles between
> soc.culture.russian.moderated, soc.culture.russian (unmoderated), and
> a dozen other newsgroups saying things like: "<The s.c.r FAQ maintainer>
> is a cocksucker and a motherfucker and has been arrested for sexually
> molesting small children".  The targets of the flames are not permitted

That is incorrect on several counts. First of all, our charter does not
prohibit flames. It prohibits harassment and spells out what should
be considered harassment:

Charter> Posts of the following types shall be off-topic in
Charter> soc.culture.russian.moderated:
Charter> 
Charter> 6. Harassing posts (of the typical form "[...] is a
Charter>    [Nazi|pedophile|forger|...]. Complain about [his|her|its]
Charter>    evil ways to [ISP|employer|Unesco|Cthulhu|Usenet Cabal|...]."
Charter> 
Charter> The proponent recognizes the distinction between patriotism and
Charter> jingoistic hatemongering.  Further, the distinction between
Charter> good-natured jokes and harassment is necessarily subjective.  The
Charter> moderators will use their best judgement to extend unbiased and
Charter> thorough consideration to submissions.
Charter> 

Second, nobody on scrm called Alex Iatskovski, whom you mentioned above
as SCR FAQ maintainer, "cocksucker", "motherfucker", or "child
molester". In fact, Dejanews search and my private archive indicate that
words cocksucker, motherfucker, molester were not used at all in our
group.

Note that I do not suggest that s.c.r.m. moderators are always fair
or always right or that we always interpret our charter correctly or
that our charter is perfect. The proposal and practice of moderation
is controversial. As you and I know, there are cases when we think that
moderation is justified, and there are cases when we think that it is
not justified.

> to respond on soc.culture.russian.moderated (there's a "blacklist" of
> people whose submissions are junked automatically, w/o a human moderator
> ever seeing them).  

This is, again, incorrect. Neither Alex Iatskovski nor any other person
associated with you has ever been on the black list. The purpose of the
black list is not to ignore people whom we do not like, but to prevent 
mailbombing of moderators.

	- Igor.