Moderation News

[Barry]

Hey Talkers!

There have been several developments on the moderation front lately.

First, I am delighted to welcome "Mad" Miles as our first Community Moderator! This is a volunteer position (but it does have occasional perks...). Miles will be helping keep an eye on our active discussion areas (when he's not composing his own long and eloquent posts!).

In addition to ensuring that the dialog remains respectful, we'll be watching for misformatted posts, excessive quotes, off-topic posts, etc.

I'm looking for another person or two to help out with this task, with a 3 month commitment. Appropriate candidates should be avid (if not complete) readers of these pages, along with authoring at least several posts and be fair and open minded.

As contentious issues arise, such as banning, I will consult with the other moderators before taking action when possible. Please contact me if you are interested!

Speaking of banning, I recently asked LenInSebastopol to leave the forum after many, many posts. While his participation was not as detrimental as some other no-longer-welcomed characters, it was exacerbated by the frequency of his posts. I requested that he throttle back but he refused. Many users found his posts arrogant, dismissive and in general not in keeping with either the values or demeanor that I try to uphold here. I was very pleasantly surprised by his very gracious response. I will be posting our private correspondence (with his permission) as an example handling be asked to leave with dignity and respect.

I recently posted about "Dark Shadows" re-emergence as "Pawtucket Redemption". I hope this will be her last un-welcomed appearance, even though it did kick off a rather good discussion.

"Valley Oak" has voluntarily elected to take a break from the discussion areas of the board as well. As many of you have witnessed, his posts can range from thoughtful to crass. I'm hoping when he returns he will contribute just the former.

And lastly, while I enjoy and appreciate all you frequent posters to our discussions, I'd love to see more people participate. One way to encourage that is to keep this space "safe" and respectful, which is why I've taken the actions above.

Another thought I've had is to create some "space" for new people. I'm considering something like "Newbie Tuesday" when I'd ask the more frequent posters to take the day off (at least from writing) and encourage some new voices. Whaddya think? Got any other ideas of how to encourage other folks to join in?

Barry

[podfish]

I hope that voices like Len's don't disappear from the forums, for a couple of reasons. It's nice to have people expressing viewpoints that run counter to my own or to what's expressed by the majority of posters, either as seed for discussion (if there's any merit to the viewpoint) or as an example of how wrong-headed some people can be. That's been a traditional role of letters-to-the-editor in papers for a long time. And contrary to some other postings recently, I do think that hoping for safety, warmth or a supporting environment on the web is futile and probably not appropriate anyway. Only when the signal-to-noise gets so high that the worthwhile posts get lost is it a problem for me.

As far as encouraging new voices: this is a huge issue for every institution, and there are a lot of reasons why people don't step up and participate. I have my guesses but I hope others spot some I'm missing. My guesses: some people don't feel that their opinions are well enough developed to stand up to argument; some just don't like the follow-up criticism; some don't express opinions unless they can fine-tune them for their audience. I think you could help a (small?) percentage of people be more willing to speak up if you had an erudite-response-free zone, where they could be guaranteed than none of the "regulars" would make any comment beyond gratitude for the life of the thread. (You regulars know who you are!). You can't guarantee that they'd be safe from trolls, without more extensive moderation anyway, but it might make some more comfortable about posting.

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Speaking of banning, I recently asked LenInSebastopol to leave the forum ......
Another thought I've had is to create some "space" for new people. I'm considering something like "Newbie Tuesday" when I'd ask the more frequent posters to take the day off (at least from writing) and encourage some new voices. Whaddya think? Got any other ideas of how to encourage other folks to join in?

Barry