Moderation (was: Stick this in your music theory and smoke it.)

[Steve Bennett-8]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp@...> wrote:
> You can add to the advantages that it can also produce a "why did you
> moderate *him*?" response from list members. I got an e-mail from the
> other user you placed on moderation, and I was puzzled as to why he
> had been placed on moderation.

Yeah, for sure. Being list moderator is pretty much a no-win game: the
best you can hope for is that no one notices your presence. Once
someone starts posting in such a way that a few people get annoyed, or
they start mildly breaking the list rules, then any action will be
divisive. Either leave them unmoderated (continuing to annoy people),
moderate them (cop flak for being heavy-handed), etc.

> I think that if the person you moderate
> objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.

Of course.

> You can also add "increases transparency".

Good point.

> I have no idea how many people are on moderation on this list. Some
> numbers might help there. I would also ask how many people are
> subscribed to this list, but that might be rather a low figure. Are
> there public stats anywhere for this list?

There don't seem to be. The administrative interface doesn't give good
stats either, it will only tell you for a given user whether they're
on moderation or not. At a guess, somewhere between 20 and 50 users
are on moderation, out of 1004 total.

And Thomas' comment:
>Personally, I am in favour of such announcements. If you aren't
announcing it publicly, it is an absolute must to inform the affected
person privately

Yes. If only because generally you put someone on moderation in order
to change their behaviour, so it would be counter-productive not to
inform them.

Steve

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[Ray Saintonge]

Steve Bennett wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp@...> wrote:
>  
>> You can add to the advantages that it can also produce a "why did you
>> moderate *him*?" response from list members. I got an e-mail from the
>> other user you placed on moderation, and I was puzzled as to why he
>> had been placed on moderation.
>>    
> Yeah, for sure. Being list moderator is pretty much a no-win game: the
> best you can hope for is that no one notices your presence. Once
> someone starts posting in such a way that a few people get annoyed, or
> they start mildly breaking the list rules, then any action will be
> divisive. Either leave them unmoderated (continuing to annoy people),
> moderate them (cop flak for being heavy-handed), etc.
>  

List rules should be very few, and they should depend on common sense.  
And if it's only a question of "mildly" breaking rules doubts should be
resolved in favour of the person making the post.  There will always be
people complaining that the traffic is too high; there was such a
complaint recently on the Wikimania-l, and the traffic there is much
smaller than what we have here.

When the complaint is about being off-topic, then what exactly is
on-topic?  Without a clear definition any moderation for this is
inevitably subjective, unless the individual insists on continuing the
topic ad nauseam.  For Jay's post about "music" I had no idea what he
was talking about, and maybe few people did; I was content to delete and
go on with the next e-mail.  Nobody else has addressed the contents of
that posting, so it seems that but for the resulting discussion about
moderation the thread would have quite rightly died an early death as a
one-post thread.


>> You can also add "increases transparency".
>>    
> Good point.
>
>  
And transparency is what protects us from arbitrary and capricious actions.

Ec

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[Steve Bennett-8]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp@...> wrote:
>> I think that if the person you moderate
>> objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.
>
> Of course.

On that note, whjonson@... has requested that I publicly confirm
that he is on moderation.

Steve

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[WJhonson]

 Steve confirm the *reason* you put me on moderation.
I'm sure that it will be quite interesting.


 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Bennett <stevagewp@...>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@...>
Sent: Tue, Sep 22, 2009 1:30 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Moderation (was: Stick this in your music theory and smoke it.)










On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp@...> wrote:
>> I think that if the person you moderate
>> objects to it, and wants it announced on the list, you should do so.
>
> Of course.

On that note, whjonson@... has requested that I publicly confirm
that he is on moderation.

Steve

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[Charles Matthews]

Ray Saintonge wrote
> List rules should be very few, and they should depend on common sense.  
> And if it's only a question of "mildly" breaking rules doubts should be
> resolved in favour of the person making the post.
OTOH this list seems to be improving in the general quality of
discussion, and in its breadth of participation. Could be that that the
listmods are doing a good job.

Charles


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[Thomas Dalton]

2009/9/22 Ray Saintonge <saintonge@...>:
> When the complaint is about being off-topic, then what exactly is
> on-topic?  Without a clear definition any moderation for this is
> inevitably subjective, unless the individual insists on continuing the
> topic ad nauseam.  For Jay's post about "music" I had no idea what he
> was talking about, and maybe few people did; I was content to delete and
> go on with the next e-mail.  Nobody else has addressed the contents of
> that posting, so it seems that but for the resulting discussion about
> moderation the thread would have quite rightly died an early death as a
> one-post thread.

Rather than speculate, I suggest you look at previous such threads
from Jay. They have usually resulted in people asking (in vain) for
clarification and complaining about Jay and emails from Jay not
understanding why people have a problem with his emails. I think a
constructive discussion about moderation policy is better than that.

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[Steve Bennett-8]

Sure. I enabled your moderation flag because you keep posting large
numbers of low-quality posts, despite my requests to the contrary. The
specific event that triggered it was your posting of 4 very similar
messages to the "Deletion of unreferenced living person biographies"
thread, all quibbling over the semantics of whether "speedy
deleletion" was equivalent to "out-of-process deletion".

One message probably would have been ok, although it would be better
if you'd advanced the discussion, rather than getting stuck on this
small point. But 4?

Anyway, please keep making good quality, relevant, interesting posts
that help advance discussions about Wikipedia - that's what this list
is for.

Steve

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:41 PM,  <wjhonson@...> wrote:
>
>  Steve confirm the *reason* you put me on moderation.
> I'm sure that it will be quite interesting.

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[Jay Litwyn-2]

Quality is too subjective, and if I put too many demands on it, then I limit
my circle of associates to friends, people whose mother tongue is English,
and elderly people who have already learned which points are too
insignificant to waste time on in debate. I also lose out on remembering how
to explain things that have been clear to me for years, and remembering how
I know, in some cases finding out how I know, or learning who else knows.
So, before you go judging quality, understand that I am glad someone other
than me is not afraid that he will appear foolish if he poses arguments with
things he does not understand, because he did not study them formally. I
would rather hav that than have people deride entire posts of mine just
because nobody answered them. That does not mean nobody listened to my MP3,
recognized it, and asked the same questions I did about the numbers. If you
are not interested in music, Steve, that is just fine with me, but realize
that it almost inevitably figures into your perception of quality. Also
realize that I am only a beginner in writing about it.

"Steve Bennett" <stevagewp@...> wrote in message
news:b8ceeef70909221720i2f5d0201o65b7d3ee83527a3a@......
Sure. I enabled your moderation flag because you keep posting large
numbers of low-quality posts, despite my requests to the contrary. The
specific event that triggered it was your posting of 4 very similar
messages to the "Deletion of unreferenced living person biographies"
thread, all quibbling over the semantics of whether "speedy
deleletion" was equivalent to "out-of-process deletion".

One message probably would have been ok, although it would be better
if you'd advanced the discussion, rather than getting stuck on this
small point. But 4?

Anyway, please keep making good quality, relevant, interesting posts
that help advance discussions about Wikipedia - that's what this list
is for.

Steve

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:41 PM,  <wjhonson@...> wrote:
>
> Steve confirm the *reason* you put me on moderation.
> I'm sure that it will be quite interesting.

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