[NTLUG:Discuss] NTLUG Discuss Guidelines

[Steve Baker]

Richard Cobbe wrote:

> One thing that's missing: what happens to a message that violates any or
> all of these constraints?  Does the post get cancelled?  Does the poster
> get unsubscribed after repeated violations?  If so, how many?
> 
> I'd be in favor of just cancelling the posts, with a short note back to the
> poster explaining the reason it was rejected.  Given this, I don't think it
> necessary to unsubscribe people without their consent.  However, I'm open
> to discussion on this.

I think one important thing to do in the interests of free speech is to
be sure to save rejected posts on a web site somewhere so that people
can still read them if they wish to do so - and to make it a rule never
to cancel posts of the form "My post was cancelled - I object to that -
but you can still read it at <url>".

Hence, instead of censoring people (which is A Bad Thing IMHO), we are
essentially using the power of the moderator to classify those things
that most people will want to read versus those that (probably) nobody
but the author cares about. No post - however unsuitable - would ever
go to /dev/null.

Also, the power of the moderator to intervene should be used exceedingly
sparingly.  I've been somewhat horrified at the degree of 'wrist slapping'
thats been going on over the past few weeks (at least three such slaps
administered so far).  If those complaints were translated into cancelled
posts, I'd certainly not be a happy camper.

I've posted a long (and hopefully constructive) list of suggestions to
our erstwhile moderator - as requested, I won't repeat them here.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker at hti.com      (work)