Re: Apologies
- From: Bruce Toews <water_drinker@xxxxxxxx>
- To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 22:01:43 -0600 (CST)
The number of posts per day is irrelevant, if they're helpful. Off-topic
posts are another story. LEt me tell you what it's like being the
moderator of this list. Not a day goes by when you don't get a deluge of
e-mail. Half the people say you're being to strict with enforcing the
rules, the other half say you're too relaxed and shouldn't be letting all
the off-topic posts through. The best you can hope to do is to be
consistent, and that inconsistency makes you a little unpopular with just
about everyone, instead of being loved by half and hated by the other
half. But if you're consistent, at least people know waht to expect. In
many respects, being list moderator is about the most thankless job
around, because with very few exceptions, the only feedback you get is
when someone's mad at you. You might find a post terribly interesting, but
you know that to let it through would be against the list policy, and if
you don't enforce the policy, what's the point in having one. So you stop
it. If the person is moderated, you prevent the message from going through
and get yelled at by the poster who feels all his or her psts are
relevant. Otherwise you have to decide if a public or private reprimand is
in order. If public, you wind up with a dozen "I agree"'s and another
dozen "I disagrees", which themselves contravene list policy, and you have
to decide how to deal with it. If your reprimand is private, then the
person invariably feels singled out because they don't realize that other
people have received similar warnings. Then there are the posts which are
borderline, but you feel they are relevant. Invariably, you have a bunch
of people saying that it's really off-topic and why did you let it
through. Then the people who felt singled out by your rejection of their
postings wondering why you let these other messages through. On top of all
that, you ahve the people who just can't figure out how to read the
unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the message, and on top of all
that you have people with real problems who genuinely require your
assistance, and sometimes you find yourself snapping at these legitimate
requests for help just because of all the other crap you've had to put up
with. When I gave up moderatorship, we were at around 600 people, and I
found that moderating this list was cutting into my real job. I couldn't
afford that, and who knows how much the list has grown since I stopped
moderating it.
Just thought you might like a glimpse into the life of the list moderator.
Bruce
--
Bruce Toews
E-mail and MSN/Windows Messenger: water_drinker@xxxxxxxx
Web Site (including info on my weekly commentaries): http://www.ogts.net
For information on my weekly radio show visit
http://radioclassics.ogts.net
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005, Francis Daniels wrote:
> I'm with Jack on the issue as to how many posts we should do per day. If I
> am on a list, I want to participate. Isn't that why the list is there? If
> I see that some one has responded to an issue, and if I have something to
> add, I will add to it. There are some days where I listen in but not add to
> the thread. Sorry, but I'm not going to count how many posts I write.
>
> Francis
>
>
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