Re: Dissolving Choke Points

[Peter Hendrickson <pdh@best.com>]

At 7:59 PM 2/3/1997, Greg Broiles wrote:
>At 10:55 AM 2/3/97 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>> Moderation has been a failure.  I'm pretty good at filtering and I
>> can sadly report that there is very little signal out there.

> I don't think it's reasonable to expect an increase in signal within 2 1/2
> weeks of the start of moderation.

What I have seen is a pretty complete elimination of the signal that
was there.  Some might argue that this is "just" because Tim stopped
posting.  But so what?  The result of moderation was the elimination
of signal.  (Aside: Can anybody think of five members of the list
whose combined contributions clearly exceed Tim's?  I can't.)

Also, I am curious when you expect the benefits of moderation to
arrive.  Two and a half weeks should be plenty of time for a reasoned
creative and interesting discussion to develop.  It hasn't happened.
Instead the value of the list has - in my view - steadily tapered off
since the announcement of moderation.

>> There are lessons to be learned here.  One is that censorship does
>> not promote a stimulating and creative dialogue.

> No, that is a silly lesson to draw from this experiment. There are
> lots of useful and interesting "moderated" (on paper, it's called
> "editing") publications/lists/digests where the content is
> intentionally controlled for content and style.

And in practice people get their friends published.  Ever wonder why
Denning got so much bandwidth on the RISKS list when she had so little
to say?

I don't like edited journals, either.  I prefer to have somebody I
respect say "Did you see so-and-so's paper?  Here's the URL."  Most of
what is in, for instance, peer reviewed scientific journals is fluff
designed to enhance somebody's resume.

Moderation was a good idea when you had a number of people who
couldn't all talk at once in the same room and in which a disruptive
influence could not be easily ignored.

We have better ways to communicate now.  Let's use them.

Peter Hendrickson
pdh@best.com