You may find the rules on our website:
www.winonaonlinedemocracy.org We
all agreed to abide by these when we signed up for membership. To my
knowledge there is no membership list of names--only email addresses.
Craig Brooks has access to that list which would only give us a hint regarding
the identities of all the members. The only time anyone knows for certain that
an individual is a member is when s/he posts to the list and signs the post with
his/her name as is required by the rules.
I'm not sure how to proceed as Roy, who is a member
of the steering committee, has chosen to respond to Jerome's post
individually. The conversation from last Tuesday's steering committee
meeting has been ongoing via emails between members of the steering
committee, including Roy. I'm surprised by his perception that the issue
had been laid to rest. I had hoped that the steering committee might be
able to come to some consensus as to a statement regarding the questions raised
by Jerome. Regardless, I will attempt to explain the rationale for the
action.
I will try to respond the best I can, but it is of
utmost importance to me that I respect the privacy of Dr. Schild and all other
individuals with whom I have corresponded in the course of moderating the
discussion over the past few years. There have been many rule violations
over the years with only two resulting in suspensions during my tenure as a
moderator. Dr. Schild's is the second. No off-list communications or
suspension notices have ever been public information. I think this is true
of Steve Kranz's tenure as list manager as well. My sense is that it is to
protect the privacy of members off-list communication and is consistent with our
rule about not forwarding private emails to the list.
Let me preface all of this by informing everyone of
my (and previously, Sharon's) procedures for addressing these types of
violations. Our first course of action has always been to send a friendly,
respectful reminder of the rules to the individual. Sometimes it is not
accompanied by any parallel action that the entire list would see. Other
times this is accompanied by a note to the list with a reminder of the
rules or asking for a greater level of civility or re-framing the discussion
back toward the issues at hand.
Some of you may recall or may wish to review the
archives for examples of this type of moderator intervention as far as messages
to the entire list are concerned.
If the individual does not acknowledge the rule
violation, but stops pursuing the individual or issue in a way that is contrary
to the rules, no further action is taken. If there are frequent offenses
(e.g., several posts or issues within a few weeks time), then an off list
message to the individual is sent indicating that this is grounds for suspension
from the list and options are explored to meet the both the goals of
inclusiveness and civility. If the individual and I (and/or Sharon at the
time she was co-moderating) can not resolve the situation to meet both
objectives, then the individual will be informed of suspension from the list for
90 days, at which time s/he would be eligible to re-join, again agreeing to
abide by the rules as stated on the website.
My experience has been that often times individuals
who break a rule will self-reflect and later on submit a message to the list
apologizing for mis-stepping the rule. In this case, I feel that there is
no intervention needed by the moderator. I know that at times I
have stated that we all could be in the situation of becoming passionately
overzealous about issues that are personally important and have asked for all to
self-monitor as much as possible. I try to encourage acceptance of
human imperfection while also trying to create a norm or expectation of
civility. I have consistently been of the opinion and I think my
moderating has reflected that it is not a rule violation per se that is as great
a threat to online civility as an individual's response to being cautioned after
having overstepped the boundary of civility.
My experience has been that for the most part, when
members have been confronted, they acknowledge this and agree to self-monitoring
and commit to improved civility in the future. Sometimes individuals will
voluntarily post to the list acknowledging their error or clarifying their
statements. Sometimes I suggest or request that individuals post to
the list in order to do so (i.e., make amends for a rule transgression).
Rarely individuals have stated they preferred to voluntarily unsubscribe.
In one previous case, when an individual disagreed with my assessment of the
rule violation, the individual was suspended for 90 days.
Just a reminder that our rules state:
"It is the list manager�s job to make sure these
rules are followed and to take action, using his/her judgment, to help maintain
a constructive discussion. Among other things, these actions can include
removing a member from the list for a serious violation or repeated violations.
The list manager has the final word on any issues regarding rule violations
and/or when it is appropriate to remove a member from the list."
It was this section of the rules empowering the list
manager to make that judgment call that I think is most significant to my
actions regarding Dr. Schild.
The rule in question is as follows:
"Disagreements and conflicting viewpoints are a
natural part of discussion, but list members should work to discuss them
constructively. Talk about the issues, not the individuals. Try to help people
understand your point without being antagonistic, sarcastic or argumentative.
Ask questions to try and understand others� points of view. Keep in mind the
words of Thomas Jefferson, 'I never saw an
instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by
argument'."
The post by Dr. Schild that initially caused me to
become concerned about rule violation was on November 3, 2004:
"I wonder if Winona Online Democracy (WOD) members
will be as angry at Larry Jacobs as they were at me a few months back. I
wonder if they'll write the same kind of things about him as they wrote
about me. I wonder if they'll urge him to 'get a life'."
These are questions, but certainly the intent is
not to facilitate understanding. In my assessment, it was to remind
the list of the poor reaction to his presentation and to assert the validity of
his criticisms. I believe he acknowledged this to me at some point in our
exchanges. To me the tone was antagonistic and inflammatory and, I
believe, intentionally that way. It did not seem to me to be in the spirit
of civil discourse. I wanted to affirm his right to assert his
concerns and the validity of his findings in a way that would be more
constructive and less critical of WOD members.
Now I can hear you all wondering,
"NOVEMBER?!!? Why is this happening now?!?!"
Well, Dr. Schild and I have been involved in and
off and on exchange regarding his conduct on WOD since May of 2003 after his
presentation at the historical society. I thought that we had reached a
"meeting of minds" last June of 2003 after several email exchanges and at least
one phone conversation.
In November, I contacted him off-list again in
accordance with the procedures described above. We could not come to a
meeting of minds at that point and he asked to meet with me face to face.
I agreed. For a number of reasons, that meeting did not take place until
May 21, 2004. Suffice it to say that his post regarding his recent paper
was the catalyst for the meeting finally taking place, but was in no
way, shape or form the reason for the meeting. I believe that I
stated clearly to him that my purpose in meeting with him was to find a mutually
agreeable solution to the dilemma I felt as the moderator having to respond to
him not only as a member, but as a journalist and a researcher for whom WOD
is the subject of the apparently ongoing research he is doing.
I left that meeting having none of my questions
answered, but rather had been the target of his questions, which I attempted to
answer directly and honestly. I reviewed both my email exchanges with him
and the archives and found this to be a fairly consistent pattern of
interaction.
It was at this point that, after months of
carefully considering his questions and concerns and trying to do the right
thing (admittedly hoping that it would all just go away--which I consider a
fairly human response) that I finally came to the conclusion that it was the
right decision to suspend Dr. Schild from the list as had been the case with a
previous member who disagreed with the moderators' assessment.
Much of this came up at the steering committee
meeting last Tuesday and has prompted a discussion of whether or not the
steering committee should hear appeals of suspended list members or how we
should adapt the rules to better address situations like this in the
future. I think this is an excellent topic for discussion and
invite/suggest the steering committee open the discussion up to the list
on another discussion thread. I am in total support of an adaptation of
the rules and can see how the current rules have not been sufficient to address
the kind of conflicts that grew out of the situation. I also stand by my
decision as the right decision given the rules and the history of moderator
actions to address civility and rule violations.
I thank you all for reading this far if you have
done so and will likely refrain from answering any other questions about this
matter for a while. I hope you will all understand that although this is a
new issue for many of you, it is a very long-standing one that I have spent many
hours contemplating, losing sleep over, researching, consulting, and trying
to address directly with Dr. Schild rather than create a situation that could
lead to incorrect assumptions such as the one asserted by Jerome earlier today
when he intimated that I, "personally felt this action was necessary to
prevent the collapse of constitutional government and western civilization as we
have known it."
For the record, Jerome, that is not
a feeling and I didn't think it either! ;) I also
really enjoy your sense of humor while trying to take my role seriously and hope
that this is a thorough enough explanation because it is all I have to say about
the matter.
Kathy Seifert
