Post in 15. Moderating or facilitation discussions

2005 Dec 08 13:24 UTC

Carol Hayward <<email obscured>>

> Does anyone have any particular questions or issues they would like to
discuss?

I think it's important that the technical aspect of moderation is
kept apart from the social aspect of it and the policy-agreeing.

Some of the free software community's mailing lists are fairly
notorious for being flamepits or other wastes of space. Most of
the bad ones share a common trait: social moderation is done by
a sort of "mob rule" which can get ugly fast. None of the mob
feels a particular investment or responsibility in the social
aspect of the list - it's a purely technical communication
channel to them - so the social moderation is pretty thoughtless.
It seems to tend towards the dominant culture riding roughshod
over any minorities, or list heat death if there is no one
dominant culture.

(Disclosure: in my time, I've probably been part of some of those
mobs. Then I realised it didn't do much beside store up trouble.)

This is something where the Issues Forums guide looks very
right. As well as the forum manager who deals with the technical
aspect, there's the steering group who deal with the social
aspect, even if most of that is delegated to the forum manager
to implement through the technology. And a moderation log is a
good idea if someone else is to handle social moderation well.

One essential point that participants should accept is that
sometimes forums will split or merge because of differences
or similarities. The world hasn't found a way for fascists and
anti-facists to coexist without causing divisions, so why should
we expect online to be so far ahead of it?

Splits and merges don't seem to be addressed in the IF guide yet.
Should they happen or not?