On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Alan Mintz <alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net> wrote: >> ...Any moderation will be announced to those people I just mentioned, and >> not publicly. Why not publicly? On balance, it seems better to not call out >> individuals publicly which might only make things worse and make them feel >> more upset, which is not the purpose of a 'cooling off' period. > > I believe doing it this way is better because it makes it less personal. If > it's public, it's more like making a child sit in the corner in front of the > room, which is as much about humiliation/embarrassment as anything else.
First, thank god for the new moderation policy. Second, to offer my thoughts on public/private announcement of moderation. I've been a moderator of the wikien-l list (English Wikipedia's main mailing list) for years, though not so actively recently. In practice, it's not that simple. By default, I don't announce moderation of people, except: - when people have been complaining about them, in order to quickly resolve the complaints - when the moderatee starts complaining to me personally, in order to avoid accusations of censorship etc. - when I want to make an example of a couple of people (ie, "That's enough. I've put the following people on moderation to kill off this horrible topic.") - to pre-empt conspiracy theories If you don't announce moderation, then people can start to wonder what's going on, and they start to assume all sorts of other people are being moderated, when it's not the case. And when there has been a big noisy thread, and suddenly it just stops, people deserve an explanation. Moderating is not always easy, and can be very tedious. On wikien-l, it's performed by an appointed group. On numerous occasions I've found discussing individual cases with the other moderators to be helpful, particularly to check my own impartiality and judgment. SteveC may find it helpful to do the same. Steve _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
