Reasons for hall monitoring

Paul W. Frields stickster at gmail.com
Thu May 6 15:47:21 UTC 2010


On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 05:26:08PM -0400, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 04:43:43PM -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> > Toshio Kuratomi (a.badger at gmail.com) said: 
> > > > I can't speak for the other Board members but I do think there are
> > > > senses in which we can be non-excellent to each other without using
> > > > insults.  If our mailing lists stay cordial, but their content becomes
> > > > increasingly redundant or repetitive, that also can contribute to a
> > > > negative environment that pushes people away from communicating with
> > > > each other.
> > >
> > > I think you're wrong here.  People post redundant information because they
> > > think they're helping.  Helping is being excellent to each other.
> > 
> > I don't see how that makes what Paul said *wrong*. Just because
> > people think they're helping, doesn't mean it they actually are, or
> > that it doesn't create a negative environment.
> > 
> It's wrong to say that it means that we are being non-excellent to each
> other.  Creating a negative environment doesn't mean that there's
> non-excellence going on.  I mean if all your criteria is that you create an
> environment that pushes people away from communicating with each other,
> there's a lot of things that a re necessary to the proper functioning of
> our project that do that. 

Yes, this is a good point -- everyone needs to be able to openly and
civilly criticize things they think are wrong to facilitate change.
The policy's intent is not to stop healthy debate.

> The basis of hte current policy is non-excellence.  If you want to
> also hall monitor redundant and repetivie posts or anything that
> creates a negative environment then please, write it into the policy
> so that we all know what to expect.

We can try and draw finer and finer lines about content with good
intentions, but I think that ignores that often the decision isn't a
simple binary one.

Somethig I noticed in previous moderated threads, although there
haven't been many of them from which to sample, is that a moderator
warning didn't stop conversation completely.  It prompted people to
pull out specific bits of the thread that were solvable problems and
suggest ways to do that.  Do you think that's possible with this
latest thread?

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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