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On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 1:05 PM, Seebs <usenet-nospam / seebs.net> wrote:

> On 2010-04-14, Josh Cheek <josh.cheek / gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sorry, I do my email online, so used the wrong terminology. I just mean
> that
> > gmail will take 50 posts about ruids, and group them all together in a
> > single thread, so it doesn't spam my inbox. It also filters the threads
> out
> > and sets them in their own separate area, so they never touch my inbox at
> > all. If your _client_ ;) didn't do this, I can see how the list could
> spam
> > your inbox.
>
> You don't seem to understand.
>
> It doesn't matter whether you *see* them.  If they're sent, they're taking
> up bandwidth for every single reader, and that is a significant cost.
>
>
Okay, but if we're going to take that route, then a moderator stopping a
post removes it from every single reader's eyes. A moderator banning someone
means that everyone who didn't consider it spam or trolling or inappropriate
or whatever is affected. A moderator a little too happy about their power
affects every single person.

With this considering the net effect approach, I think the best argument
would be to weigh the cost of people having to deal with spam against the
cost of a moderator deciding what is spam and removing it, and the risk a
moderator presents, the likelihood of finding a moderator who can be trusted
and is reliable, and the avenues of moderation available, what can be done
if the moderator is unreasonable, and how to decide they are unreasonable
(of course, we are electing them to hide information from us, so would we
even know if they were being too heavy handed?).

If enough people think it is a worthwhile trade off then yeah, lets look
into it.

But at this point, people calling for moderation haven't even qualified
their complaints.

"rampant with security vulnerabilities, and in need of moderation."
"recent high volume of off-topic posts"
"gotten to an unusable space"
"high volume of off-topic email"

Not one person has given a single example. What are the issues? What if they
are talking about posts _you_ consider relevant, useful, important? There
have been several calls to explain

"I can't see any'off topic' threads"
"need to clarify specifically what their issue is"

But so far, we're just taking peoples word that what irritates them
irritates everyone and should be removed. Should we really be considering
taking action to solve a problem we haven't identified? How do we even know
a moderator will help? Maybe the moderator doesn't have an issue with
whatever posts are bothering these people. Then we've created
responsibilities and elected representatives to solve a problem that it
either doesn't solve, or that was localized to the people calling for
action.

If you want moderation, please explicitly lay out examples of issues you
have, and why you think a moderator would resolve these.

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