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Subject: Re: I resign the Post as Moderator.

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 21:30:09 07/23/99

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On July 23, 1999 at 19:43:23, Amir Ban wrote:

[snip]
>
>As a former moderator I take credit for inventing the "on-duty" procedure. When
>I was lobbying for it, I described it to my fellow moderators (Don Dailey &
>Bruce Moreland) in these terms:
>
>Having one moderator on duty doesn't mean that he has all the power. The
>principle of majority decision still holds. The moderator on duty acts as a sort
>of chairman, decides the agenda, and asks the two others to vote on stuff. He
>can act alone only in cases that are too simple to bother the others, or have
>already been discussed by the moderators and the action is what was agreed
>should be taken in such a case. IN ANY CASE, if the moderator on duty already
>knows of a dissenting opinion by another moderator, he's not allowed to act
>alone and must get the opinion of the third moderator.
>
>This was my understanding of the rules, and they were followed with no
>exceptions that I can remember.

These were your rules. This is the first I have heard of them. Personally, I
think that they are a fine set of rules with the exception of when a post is
just plain bad and should be deleted immediately, regardless of circumstances.

>
>It doesn't seem the present moderators have worked out any such procedures, or
>at least that's my impression from the posts in this thread. If they were
>following the procedures set above, I would consider Bruce's action to be
>illegal, since he should have assumed that Fernando, by posting what he did,
>disagrees with him, and he had to resort to majority vote.

As I said, this is the first I have heard of these rules. What we had done is
ask if the previous moderators had some guidelines and we got some. We forwarded
them around, only two of them got discussed as potential drops, and that was it.
Nobody wrote up a formal set of guidelines. The two that got discussed were not
allowing moderation Emails to be posted and having a procedure to remove a rogue
moderator. Neither of these seemed to be appealing to everyone. The guideline on
having one moderator delete on his own authority was never discussed by anyone
(Fernando included). I took it to mean that we all basically agreed that it and
the other guidelines were more or less fine.

>
>I think Bruce showed very poor judgement here. His action would not deserve much
>comment against an ordinary member, and would probably be perfectly justified,
>but for the moderators to start censoring each other does not make sense, for
>reasons that have nothing to do with the charter. What we have now can be called
>a constitutional crisis.

I disagree. Bruce showed good judgement. He weighed the worthlessness of the
post and the chance of it creating controversy versus Fernando's desire to have
it posted. Nobody is clairvoyant enough to figure out that Fernando would take
it so hard. Quite frankly, I was shocked that he did. If one of my worthless
posts would have been deleted, I would have said, "Oh well.".

Let's just examine for a moment what we are talking about. We are not talking
about an opinion of which engine is stronger. We are not talking about even a
borderline post such as the FIDE ratings. We are talking about a joke and a
potentially offensive one at that.

I think you give the moderators too much power when you say they are not subject
to the same set of rules as everyone else.

>
>Experience shows that the post of moderator needs quite a bit of talent for
>politics and diplomacy. I hope the voters will remember this next time.
>
>Amir

KarinsDad :)



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