David Brauer said: >A few people in the last few days have crossed the line - into >one-on-one food fights or disrespectful mockery. Warnings have been >given for the first time in many weeks, and will continue in the new >year if needed. Principled disagreement is fine, but the extra >belittling or personal spite is not. This sort of spitefulness is the >number one reason people leave the list - and our goal is to get >everyone who cares about the city here.
I, too, am in favor of principled discussion rather than food fights. To that end, I'm curious whether our moderator has actually banned anyone from the site for persistent food fighting? I suspect that the answer is "no" because it is too close to censorship of unpopular opinions. At the same time, I'm afraid that admonitions to behave are about the same as telling a child, "I'm only going to warn you 20 or 30 more times and then I'm really going to punish you." But I'd urge our moderator to consider an alternative. Much like the British Parliament, you don't have to inflict the death penalty (permanent expulsion) on the first occurrence of any misbehavior. Parliament can and does exclude members for days or weeks for minor infractions. Perhaps our moderator might want to have some progressive discipline. That is, first warning and your excluded for a week; second warning for a month; third warning and you're out permanently. When it happens, our moderator should say something like "so-and-so is excluded from the site for a week for food fighting." Doing that might save our moderator from regular admonitions to behave. I'd also suggest some positive reinforcement. Maybe once a month or quarterly our moderator should publish a list of superb discussions and the participants' names. Steve Cross Prospect Park _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
