Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 23:22:24 07/23/99
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On July 24, 1999 at 01:21:36, Robert Hyatt wrote: >I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with that concept. Moderators were elected >to remove post _they_ consider to be inappropriate to this forum. They were >not elected and given special privileges of posting something that requires >_two_ other moderators to remove, while the rest of us can be excised by a >single moderator. > >As memebers we have email facilities to tell a moderator when _we_ think that >something is inappropriate. But we elect moderators to use _their_ judgement >in the normal case. > >The post was inappropriate. It should have been deleted. It was. > >All that we need is a formal recall procedure so that if a majority here feel >that a moderator went too far, he can be removed by a majority vote. But to >make this into a complex, slow, interactive voting process is simply too >complicated... and is unnecessary. > >In fact, you'd think a moderator would be the _last_ person to make such a >post, not the _first_... That caused this problem to surface at the beginning >of this mess... This is a strange situation that I hope doesn't repeat. I see the point that Amir was making though. If it had been some random person whose post I deleted, it would have been difficult to criticise what I did. People might complain that I didn't follow some sort of "majority vote" rule, but this rule is not part of CCC, it's a matter for the moderators to decide amongst themselves how to make decisions. I think there are a couple of reasons to criticise my choice, given that I deleted a post written by a moderator. The first involves the need to be more careful about process, since implicit in my action was a conflict with another moderator. Clearly, if I am deleting something written by a moderator, that moderator has a disagreement about content, since they wrote the thing in the first place. The second involves some sort of implicit endorsement of the judgement of the moderators, since they were voted into office. The notion is that there are people who voted for that moderator candidate, and these votes are endorsements of that person's past and future behavior in the group. I am not insensitive to these issues. At the moment I saw that post I had to make a decision quickly. I regarded it as a markedly bad post, a post that served no purpose and would cause nothing but trouble if it were allowed to remain. I knew that I was going to go off-line soon, and I had no idea when the other moderators would return. I did not like the big mess that happened when Fernando replied to Tanya Devora, and I didn't want that to happen again. I figured that if I left the post there, it would stay for a long time, and there would be email waiting the next morning complaining about it, and complaining about moderators who spontaneously post dirty jokes. I could think of no reason why this should be endured. The post didn't achieve anything, it was nothing more than a magnet for trouble. I figured that if I deleted it quickly enough, nobody would see it, and we could discuss it via email, and KD and I would probably end up getting Fernando to agree not to post stuff like that again. I didn't think that Fernando would immediately make it a public issue. That's the background behind that choice. If people don't think I made the right choice, I'm not sure what I can say other than that I did the best I could with the cards I was dealt. bruce
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