Moderation: No thanks

Whereas I'm not in favor of sweeping generalizations....
Whereas I'm not in favor of bigotry.....
Whereas I'm not in favor of shoot-from-the-hip posting....
Whereas I'm not in agreement with some things said by some people (to
the point of violent disagreement).....
And Whereas I'm not perfect myself, 
 
I'm still distinctly unlikely to join a moderated list. 

My own views are that censorship should be applied by individuals for
their own purposes, not by others on their behalf( YMMV ). Further,
good, consistent moderation is hard to achieve and slows the pace of
discussions. You can end up with a dictatorship of the small elite. Not
interested at all. 

Almost every mail client will support some sort of killfile list to
delete posts from X offensive poster. (More of a challenge for us
digesters, but the scroll keys work pretty effectively)

I don't want (with all due respect) Jerry or anyone else deciding what I
see. They may (mostly) represent my views, but how will I know when they
are not? And will any whiff of controversy bring out their reaction? And
will their own pecadillos and prejudices be somehow absent? Nope, no
thanks. 

Yes, I think some people should realize that:

1) flame wars are inappropriate and can be effected (if they must) off
list

2) responding to a flame is participating in a flame war (if you aren't
part of the solution... you're part of the problem)

3) the best way to deal with idiotic posts is to IGNORE THEM (Why? Most
listers are bright enough to recognize stupidity and give it the short
shrift it deserves without anyone to point it out....)

4) I've seen some (from my view) silly comments about a lack of SciFi
postings.... that's just about as 
ridiculous a thing as I've heard yet on the list! (Well, that's
hyperbole, I admit.) Future History IS Sci-Fi. Future History derives
from current and past history. Future tech derives from current and past
tech. Future attitudes will probably mimic (in some degree) past or
current ones. Now, do I agree that some of these discussions should move
to the gzg history list? Yes. But only because that is a more focused
list. This list is a generalist list that covers all matters of interest
to the GZG community and the only real definition of that is "what are
we discussing?". It is of interest to at least someone in the GZG
community if it appears here, and perhaps more than one person. Often
you won't know until after the topic is tossed around. But if most
people don't like it, they can get up and say "this is offtopic" or "not
very interesting" or BEST of all, propose their OWN topic and get a
better discussion going. I'd rather not see the list try to enforce
someone's pet standard of what is or is not SciFi. 

5) Posting when aggitated means you are likely to say something stupid.
Let it sit for a day, and even then review your post before making it.
Quickdraw replies usually make you look pretty dumb. And they prolong
the general agony.

There seems to be a misconception that you can get a better S/N ratio by
getting rid of all the N. Whereas to some extent this is true, if there
is no signal, the ratio won't improve. The best way to beat unpleasant
or uninteresting topics is to FLOOD the list with GOOD topics and
INTERESTING posts. It is always easier to criticise than to create....
but creation is more powerful.

There, I've posted my run-on rant. I'm sorry to see list members go if
they don't like the tone.... and I wish everyone would focus on being
passably polite. One can still hold radically divergent opinion without
being inflammatory or rude or by questioning the morals or standards of
another list member. But the list should be a free medium of discussion
for good or ill. 

Of course, as Dennis Miller says, I could be wrong. 

Tomb

PS - I've seen a number of web communities that use moderation systems
(Kuro5hin, Slashdot, etc) and most of them have problems with Trolling
and crappy Moderation and they have hundreds of thousands of
participants and thousands of moderators I'm sure. Now some are even
moderating moderations to try to sort out good moderators from bad....