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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Zonker T. Chuqui)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.flame
Subject: Re: mod.all and net.fascism
Message-ID: <1612@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 21:03:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.1612
Posted: Tue Oct 16 21:03:17 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Oct-84 06:45:51 EDT
References: <3886@decwrl.UUCP> <1574@nsc.UUCP> <200@bragvax.UUCP> <371@amdahl.UUCP> <429@amd.UUCP> <374@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: The Warlocks Cave, Castrovalva
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> The difference is that net.motss is free and unmoderated, while
> mod.motss is not.  Anyone can post and respond to articles in net.motss
> while articles to mod.motss are ``moderated'' (ie, selectively filtered).

The difference is also that a very small but motivated group of people 
can 'take over' a group and make a group completely useless for it's
intended target. This can be done by sheer volume, by endless bickering, by
nausea, or by brute bigotry. Look at the recent problems in net.motss and
the ongoing problems with net.music.classical for examples where a minority
party has made a group pretty painful for the interested majority. This is
unmoderated and free CENSORSHIP in another form, because many people give
up in disgust and go elsewhere. A significant difference with moderators is
that (1) they are approved and regulated by their readership-- if they are
screwing up they can be booted out; and (2) there is a guaranteed forum for
people to find out IF he is screwing up in the old net. group
because the readers can get together and compare notes. With the *ssh*l*s
that take the advantages of 'free and unmoderated' without accepting the
responsibilities of same, you can't do anything at all unless you can talk
someone in control of their local site to shove a bicycle pump down their
throats for you. As usenet has grown, the number of these immature idiots
has grown to the point that using certain groups has become painful past
the reasonable level for many people and they've unsubscribed. 

I've recently been taking a poll as to whether or not mod.singles should
exist. Early results were VERY negative, but they have turned around
significantly and the clear majority is currently in favor of moderating
this group. One of the more common comments I've gotten is that a person is
really looking forward to reading singles again because they simply ran out
of 'n' key time to wade through the chaff and had to unsubscribe. You can
call moderation censorship, but that is taking a very narrow view of the
whole situation. Large numbers of messages is censorship, innappropriate or
duplicated messages are censorship, offensive messages are censorship,
anything that forces people to unsubscribe to a group that they would like
to read is censorship. To me, moderation means removing as many of the
NEGATIVE forms of censorship as possible to try to make reading the group
as useful as possible to as wide an audience as possible. This does NOT
mean limiting content, topics, or whatever-- it just means keeping the
noise factor to a minimum. If I believed otherwise I wouldn't be spending
part of my copious free time moderating something. I don't expect myself to
be perfect, and I expect my readers will happily jump on my face when I
make a mistake. I also expect that as time goes on the mistakes I make will
become less frequent as I learn what my readers expect of me-- it basically
comes down to the fact that I'm trying to save them time and trouble at my
own expense. I don't think things will ever be perfect (and I dare anyone
to claim that the status quo is) but I do think they will be better.

> This hurts me because I know that discussions in mod.motss have to
> pass somebody's idea of quality control whereas net.motss was a
> lively exchange of ideas.
>
> I can't help see this as a case of ``I'm taking my marbles and going
> home!''
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I don't see how an exchange of ideas can be any
less lively under mod. simply because someone tries to keep the
discussion within the frame of reference it should never left in the first
place. A recent case in net.singles was a discussion of singles and
Christianity that quickly devolved into a discussion of Christianity that
had nothing to do singles and should have moved to net.religion. A
moderator could have either steered the subject back to the original topic
or asked them to move it-- as it was there were quite a few of us who sat
back and steamed because it was making it really hard to deal with the
topics that net.singles is really about. Is it censorship to ask a splinter
discussion to move to a more appropriate place (such as mail)? Maybe. But I
also propose that having splinter subjects in inappropriate places that
keep the topic in general from functioning as they are supposed to (and
frustrating the majority of readers as it does so) is also censorship of a
more negative kind.

This isn't a cocktail party where a group of people can move into another
room. Everyone has to listen to everything if they want to listen at all,
and the only saviour is the 'n' key. The one thing my results have shown is
that there are many people out there that simply don't have the time or
patience to 'n' through 20 messages a day to find the three or four in a
group they WANT to see. The noise overwhelms the signal. And that is
censorship of the worst kind.

chuq
-- 
From the Department of Bistromatics:                   Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui  nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

How about 'reason for living?'

(Editors note: Bistromatics is NOT a typo. Bistromathics is the study of
math on an italian waiters checkpad. Bistromatics is the study of Italian
cooking on females of the human species. Please quit sending me mail)