Yes your comic responses are half my reason for sticking around ;) I think the biz list is a good idea and most moderated lists suffer in speed of delivery and contribution
Sent from my iPhone On Aug 30, 2011, at 8:43 PM, Alex Balashov <[email protected]> wrote: > On 08/30/2011 04:20 PM, Bryan M. Johns wrote: > >> I would be interested to know if any of you think that Digium should >> moderate the biz list as a means of preventing abuse? Thoughts? >> Feelings? > > For what my opinion is worth, I would resoundingly say "no". It has always > seemed to me that Digium's hands-off approach to the mailing lists has > resulted in more orderly--and at the same time, interesting--forums than ones > characterised by a high degree of policing. The lack of interventionist > moderation is not responsible for a decline in the activity of this list. > > Yes, there have been some spectacular flamewars here, and at times, > spectacularly juvenile ones. (It goes without saying that I have not been > above the fray.) But they play out rather quickly for two reasons, as far as > I can see: > > 1. People have the existential realisation that nobody is here to > restore order or define boundaries themselves, which makes them > feel exposed, rather like the feeling of digging one's hole > deeper and deeper. > > When there is a default background assumption of "adult > supervision", participants have less compulsion to introspect > about their own behaviour. Instead, they default to the > moderator. If the moderator has not intervened, it means > what you're doing is okay by default. > > It's the same with any system of rules, really. If you give > people a non-trivial body of statutory law or a powerful > arbitration body to settle all disputes subjectively, they > disengage from philosophical consideration of morality > and justice situationally, in an applied, detailed sense. > Instead, they just content themselves with worrying about > whether X is against the law or not. > > Most list participants are pretty intelligent. If you don't > grant them a reprieve from having to think about what they're > doing by providing an avenue to which to defer, they come to > their senses quite quickly. > > It's the same principle that provided for relatively stable > social order in the frontier settlements of the American West. > It turns out people, given a certain level of intelligence and > what might be generally called "culturedness", can cooperate > and police themselves fairly well. > > 2. Moderation adds latency to the process of winding down bad > behaviour by creating opportunities at every point to have a > referendum on whether the moderator's actions are appropriate, > and generally talk about a lot of meta. > > When there is no moderation, there's not much there except the > content itself, which removes much of the cloud of political > valence that policing can otherwise have. > > It is very advantageous to have bad spikes of behaviour burn themselves out > quickly, in the kind of way in which networks not substantially firewalled at > the edge tend to weather [D]DoS attacks better than ones which are. If there > are just routers efficiently forwarding packets, they tend to make it into > the network without taking any of the core infrastructure down. Firewalls, > on the other hand, require a lot of statekeeping and incremental resource > commitment to maintain connection-oriented or other flow awareness. > > Centralised moderation is generally an unwinnable game, anyway: > > - Too loose? "I can't believe Digium besmirches the soul of this list by > allowing this twaddle to be posted! Where are the moderators when you need > them?" > > - Too conservative? "Digium's lists are tyrannically censored!" > > - Too slow? Nearly real-time communication is a productive virtue on mailing > lists, and having to wait two hours for every post to be approved (if that > were the moderation strategy, for instance) is frustrating. > > - Too fast? "The moderators really jumped the gun on this one!" > > - In general, any decision the moderator makes is an opportunity to hold a > big meta-referendum on whether the moderator did the right thing, if the > moderator is a positive or negative force in the universe generally, if > Digium's insidious commercial agenda shines through in its editorial > decisions, etc. > > All this to say: > > 1. Nature has a way of breaking that which does not bend. We'll get a lot > further embracing this fact than resisting it. > > 2. Mailing lists are indebted to the very democratic, humanity-affirming > spirit of the early Internet. Let's fight for the heart of this one without > losing its soul. > > Cheers, > > -- Alex > > -- > Alex Balashov - Principal > Evariste Systems LLC > 260 Peachtree Street NW > Suite 2200 > Atlanta, GA 30303 > Tel: +1-678-954-0670 > Fax: +1-404-961-1892 > Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/ > > -- > _____________________________________________________________________ > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- > > asterisk-biz mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
