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  [Aroid-l] Aroid-L Moderation
From: samarak at gizmoworks.com (Steve Marak) on 2008.01.04 at 04:57:33(16889)
Good comments, Harry. As you obviously know, maintaining any sort of forum
is more work than it appears on the surface even if you choose a complete
laissez-faire approach, and - in my opinion at least - that tends to work
no better here than in many other places. Those few lists I'm still on
which do let anyone post anything any time tend to have a very high
noise-to-signal ratio, and lots of vitriol and bad feeling. Most lists now
have been forced by the spammers to restrict posting to members only, but
even there it is a well-behaved group indeed that does not require the
occasional intervention.

A few other comments, which may (or may not) be of any interest to anyone,
about the group in general and about my "policy" - if something as vague
as what I have merits that word.

This is a very well behaved group, and most often moderation comes into
play for the reasons I mentioned - the odd spam that somehow gets through
despite the only-members-can-post setting, or something someone posted
unintentionally, or someone who has "poster's regret" (the lesser known
cousin of "buyer's remorse"), or, in a few cases, because the message had
some other problem - formatting, etc.

When something does make it to the list, it's always as the sender sent
it, i.e., I never ever edit something someone else sent and then send it
on as their words. I may ask people to rephrase something, corect
formatting issues, or even ask them if I may discard a post rather than
posting it, and - in very rare cases - I may choose to unilaterally
discard it. But if it comes through, it's as they sent it. (In theory, I
could edit something and send it on as though it came from a list member;
in practice, I haven't even investigated how one might do that on this
software.)

I do reserve the right to not post anything I choose, for any reason I
wish, and for obvious reasons I make no promise that I will filter out or
not filter out anything, on any particular criteria, or that you won't (or
will) be offended by something you see here. That pretty much has to be
every listowner's mantra these days.

That said, and because it is so much easier to be misunderstood in e-mail,
I do make an effort to catch things I think might be inflammatory or
offensive, and usually my first reaction is to ask the poster if they'll
rephrase it. As another sign of what a good group this is, people are
almost always willing to do so.

Usually, the touchiest area is inflammatory vs. controversial. The former
is not OK, the latter is, but discriminating between the two is hard,
because both tend to have high emotional investment and they're not
mutually exclusive.

Steve

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