Thoughts on moderation

[Douglas Barnes <cman@c2.net>]

Some thoughts --

1) I've known Sandy for a couple of years, and I trust him to 
   use good judgement as a moderator. It will be important to 
   develop guidelines so that the job can be rotated, but it's also
   important that the moderator be someone who doesn't have any 
   major axe to grind. Sandy has his personal likes and dislikes,
   but I don't think he'll ever stoop to tossing out opinions that
   he disagrees with.

2) I don't think that a post should be tossed out simply because
   it contains an ad-hominem attack, but only if it is entirely or 
   almost entirely an ad-hominem attack. (Timmy May sucks cock, or
   John Gilmore dead of AIDS, or found drowned in his hot tub, or 
   whatever...) I'd hate to see an otherwise substantive post get
   pitched out because it referred to Dorothy Denning as the Wicked
   Witch of the East or somesuch.

3) I agree that maintaining the list of posts that are tossed out
   is important as a check against abuse by the moderator.

4) I think that anyone who confuses the editing of a list with
   censorship is a complete fool, and should be sentenced to running
   a free counterculture newspaper in which he or she is compelled
   to publish whatever fevered ramblings enter the head of the
   members of the "community" without editing. [This is the voice
   of experience speaking here -- you don't want to do this.]

   Freedom of the press belongs to those that own presses. The 
   Internet makes it a lot easier to own a "press", but it doesn't
   make them grow on trees, nor does it give you any special rights
   to appropriate someone else's press. (I'm assuming that the peurile 
   lamers -- oops,ad-hominem alert -- who are arguing so strongly 
   against editing the list also believe in property rights, yes?)

FWIW,

Doug