Re: Moderation of GZG-L (was Re: Back from SALUTE and bye bye)

On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 21:22:31 -0700, Mark Reindl <mreindl@pacbell.net>
wrote:

>Do I feel bad about the people who've left the list?  Not really,
because
>I find that to be a somewhat extreme solution to the problem.	It
smacks a bit of
>martyrdom ("I'm leaving, and you'll never see me again, and this is
why!"), and
>of giving up.

I do feel bad when I see someone leave the list because of off topic,
undiplomatic rants. I see no reason why someone can't state their
position
without being racist or inflammatory.

On the other hand, I noticed that with most of the people (but not all)
that
have said, "I'm leaving now, because...!" that they weren't contributing
much
to the discussions. On a couple of occasions I've thought, "Uh... bye...
whoever you are...". 

It's a simple matter to find an e-mail program (and most people have one
anyway) that handles killfiles. The one I use allows me to killfile
people and
threads. It allows these filters to expire, in case you want to give
people,
or a thread, a second chance later.

Still, some posts recently have been very much over the top. I can see
why
some folks, even with kill files, would just as soon not bother reading
the
list. I've been tempted several times to just unsusbscribe myself...

I don't think moderation is the answer. The best moderation is human,
and it
just takes too much time to get messages posted. You need a bunch of
dedicated
moderators, and they are fallable.

We do have a list administrator. We need an abuse policy. If someone
breaks
the policy (and by this I'm thinking that after they have had some
warnings
and such), the person is punted from the list.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
unimaginable mortician was revealed!"