other options

[Alfred Snider]

The problem is not my taking time to read them. I scan them at best. I have,
except for a few days while in Budapest, done them more than twice a day. If
that is not soon enough for you, sorry about that. Even in today's debate
community, it seems like 6-12 hour delays are acceptable.

The solution is not an introduction system. Introduction system requires
that you kick people off who break the "compact." I would rather avoid such
proceedings. CX-L, which I also follow closely, uses this intro system to
avoid the problem they had of anonymous posters. That is not our problem.
Under such a system:
-Subscriber Aristotle joins, participates for a while, then has a conflict
with Subscriber Cicero. He has a vicious personal fight with him on  the
list, threatening physical violence.
-Then, do we decide to drop Aristotle from the list? He apologizes and
rejoins, but attacks Subscriber Medea.
-Or, he stews for a while and then asks to come back. Do you bring him back,
even if Medea protests?
-Do you ban him for life if he comes back and relapses?
-Subscriber Medea posts anti-man hate speech and is dropped from the list
with disgust by all. Then, she keeps creating new email addresses posing as
a student at some school, and posting the same stuff, which actually appears
as "I agree with Medea, but even more so....." We end up have an intro
system and a moderator system.
-We adopt this policy of intro, and then implement it by allowing everyone
now on to stay on, then kick people off as they misbehave? There is a
transition problem.

Judgments will be made. I believe that content judgment of the kind outlined
in the guidelines I distributed is easier to implement than personal
decisions about who to leave on and who to throw off. How do we throw them
off? Does a modedrator do it, or do we vote?

I believe, and correct me if I am wrong, that you value the rapid
information delivery as the crucial issue here, that you might be willing to
just delete all of those offensive, threatening messages. I can understand
that, but the other side of the issue is whether anyone wants to put their
program at risk by sponsoring a rapidfire but unmoderated list. The two
issues at play are information dissemination and information responsibility.

I wonder if there are other moderation modes we aren't yet familiar with.

I am not sure the CX-L intro system would meet our needs.

Tuna


---------------
Alfred C. Snider aka Tuna
Lawrence Professor of Forensics, University of Vermont
802-656-0097 office; 802-238-8345 mobile; 802-656-4275 fax
asnider at zoo.uvm.edu office; drtuna at earthlink.net home/mobile
http://debate.uvm.edu Debate Central website


> From: Pace Debate <Pacedebate at AOL.COM>
> Reply-To: Pacedebate at AOL.COM
> Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 17:24:48 EDT
> To: EDEBATE at LIST.UVM.EDU
> Subject: other options
>
> Tuna writes:
>
>> There seem to be two options. If there are more I am interested in
>> hearing them,  but I dislike both of the ones I can think of:
>> 1. Have a moderated list.
>> 2. End eDebate.
>
> Another possibility...
>
> Have a different kind of moderated list. One in which subscribers are
> moderated but the posts of those subscribers aren't moderated. This is the
> mode of operation for the cx-l and it seems to work ok. This won't solve the
> "censorship" issue but it would solve my biggest problem with the "new"
> edebate - the delay in posting that occurs while we wait for Tuna to read
> everything.
>
> Tim
>