nine and sixty rules and moderation

[zeborah]

birdsedge wrote:
Who rules?

And who rules the rulers?

And there were a couple of replies there but this may be something we need to discuss more.

[Or should we just create the community already and make it up as we go along?]

Do we want to moderate?

What do we want to moderate?

• Do we want to ever be able, for whatever reasons and under whatever restrictions, to exclude entire people; or do we want to only ever exclude particular topics, or styles, or posts?
• Should it be defined or will we know it when we see it?

Who do we want to do the moderating?

• One supreme dictator, a supreme triumvirate, a group of representatives polling the mood of the tyranny of the mob?

I know what I want but it may well not be what's best for the group so I need to think some more before I actually say anything.

Comments

Some rambly thoughts

[brooksmoses]

I think some level of making it up is probably good, and some level of having things predetermined would be good. A way to address that would be to have a stated intent to revisit things at a certain point. (Or maybe an unstated-externally intent; I dunno.)

I think, to some extent, there should be a cabal. A community like this is going to require work, and I do think that the "this is a thing we-the-cabal are creating to provide as a gift to the community" is a far more functional model for that than "this is a thing that we are obligated to provide to the community according to its wishes" -- aside from the fact that the community will say both "yes" and "no" and "you should do it a different way" such that chasing its wishes is a goose chase, the very most critical thing is that the community be what the people putting in the work want it to be, or else they lose their reward for putting in the work, and it's harder and harder to put it in.

Also, whole-group conversations about "how should this group be moderated" on an active group are IME rarely productive and often lead to lots of bother and ill feelings, and also tend to drag in the people who would otherwise have sense and desire to stay out of such off-topic disagreements, because of the impression that if they don't join in, their views will be left out. I think that's liable to lead to failure states.

I like the way Making Light is moderated.

I think there should be a clear statement of purpose. I like the way that rasfc has rasff, and many other communities of this sort have "that's off-topic, discuss it over there" solutions rather than "that's off-topic, go away"; IMO it makes it a lot easier to keep the main community on-topic, because it's a much more pleasant thing to move a post or conversation to a different forum rather than to delete it altogether.

I don't think the community should be very strictly limited to talking about writing; cats and chocolate and their moral equivalents should be on-topic, but it would be nice to have a way to encourage about-writing conversations.

One community I am on has a strict no-politics rule, on grounds that even sane and pleasant conversation about politics quickly degenerates, and it's best to simply not give that a place to start. I think this to be a reasonable rule, especially since it's explained that way. This may be a little harder since fictional politics is obviously on-topic, but.

I think the technical ability to ban people is a good thing to have. I think this should be very rarely, if ever, actually used.

Re: Some rambly thoughts

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

You make a lot of sense.

On a Livejournal community, there's always 'take it to your own blog' so I don't think we need to have an off-topic list.

Re: Some rambly thoughts

[brooksmoses]

Mmm, yes. And that's definitely a benefit of doing this on LJ.

Re: Some rambly thoughts

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

That sounds good and I don't think I have anything to add.

I agree that a cabal is probably the way to go. One person in charge leads to problems if they get too busy/fall sick/get overwhelmed by Life Stuff; relying on a large group reaching concensus is going to lead to lots of acrimony and arguing as everyone fights their corner and by the time a decision is reached, everyone will feel sour and exhausted.

With luck, the fact that the group would have the ability to ban people will prevent us ever having to do that.