-----original message-----
>>Having said that, if you feel the recent Wikimedia
exchange was outside of the standards of behavior of this
list, as Deborah herself indicated, that is a valid
discussion>>
Hi Surya,
Great to see we have more than a few old-hand forum
moderators here!
No, personally I did not find comments to the WikiPedia
thread at all inappropriate and was as surprised as anyone
by the initial reaction. As always varying perspectives are
not only welcomed but should be encouraged - isn't this the
fruit of open discussion?
Like yourself I am another 'old-hand' forum participant
and moderator (and yes, sanity can be tough to sustain on
our various forums at times!). One of my more interesting
experiences came about when moderating a forum of volunteer
emergency workers during the early 90's. Members were (are,
the forum still exists), volunteers working under Government
statute, so I willingly accepted an invitation from
Government back in '96 to move the forum to Government
servers (the Internet was expensive back then!)... What we
didn't realise was this also entailed Government control,
moderation, and ultimately censorship. Within 12 months the
discussion group was shut-down by officials for being, ummm,
'too expressive' in criticising Government policy. We
learnt a valuable lesson.
Within days of being shut-down I moved the group to a
Yahoogroup, and within a week our membership had more than
doubled and grew exponentially for about the next 5 years
(IMO when Government tries to silence the masses they always
fail, but another thread for another day).
What we did learn from all of this was the value of
appropriate moderation. Free Speech is the right to speak
our minds, but exercising Free Speech also contains inherent
responsibilities when speaking on public forum. A well
constructed post may contain the same message; be just as
demonstrative of 'Free Speech' as a post full of profanity
and/or flaming another individual, yet the later may not be
appropriate for a given forum and audience. Moderation is
the process of drawing a line in the sand and helping to
guide people perhaps unaware of membership requirements.
The outcome - Subsequent to this minor upheaval we again
enjoy commentary and posts that do on occasion drive change.
Government officials have once again joined our forum and
begun to listen to the thoughts and concerns of volunteers.
I continue to moderate this forum in the knowledge we are
using appropriate ICT's in a way that helps people.
Moderation is just one component to all of this.
So to your comment on standards of behaviour... Yes it is a
topic worthy of discussion and IMO should never be set in
concrete. Society has changed since the days our Govt closed
our online forum (I doubt this would ever happen again), and
our standards have likewise evolved with the times. What do
you consider to be appropriate standards for this forum
noting the evolution of online society over the past few
years?
Best Regards, Don
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