Re: RFD: comp.object.moderated moderated

[ell@access.digex.net (Ell)]

"Tim Ottinger" <ottinger@oma.com> wrote:

I make these comments to point out the fallacies, unjustness and
anti-democratic nature of the motivation behind moderation.  After
reading this RFD, I'm even more convinced that the motivation for
moderation is to place discussion control in the hands of a small
group and to deflect criticism away from them.  There is every reason
still to:  VOTE NO!

Section 1)

>When In Doubt:
>
>An article shall be accepted, especially for short off-topic
>digressions in a thread.

Why?  An alleged motivation for moderation is to stop off-topic posts.
This is subjective and allows the moderators to OK anything they
favor.

Bad.  Subjective 

Section 2)

>d) Questioning of other people's motives and honesty is explicitly
>considered both off-topic and extremely rude, no matter whether the
>contents of the article are otherwise correct or not.

Why, if it can be *substantiated*?  That is if there is evidence to
back up such questioning.

>d) Any but the most light-hearted attempts at one-upmanship will be
>disallowed.

Bad.  Should no be allowed at.  This makes it subjective.  Moderators
can allow a stream of what they consider to "light-hearted"
one-upsmanships.  These may reflect a bias of the moderators.

>When In Doubt:
>
>An article is rejected. Not a flame shall pass through.

The contradicts the immediately above.  The immediately above should
be dropped period.

>It belongs to the community of people whose work is the
>practice and theory of Object-Orientation,

This is subjective.  We have fundamental difference now on what is OO,
and even what is an object.

>When In Doubt:

>An article is rejected. Not a flame shall pass through.

>When In Doubt:

>An article is accepted, general noise level permitting.

??  2 opposite policies for "When In Doubt"

>2) Moderator Notes
>
>Moderators may add a note to an article only for the reasons and
>according to the policies stated above, to correct incomplete or
>incorrect references, or to recommend changing thread titles when
>topics drift from their original focus.

>Most articles should not have any notes. Those that do should have
>only one, or at the most two. So be judicious.

Terrible!  There should be *no* moderator notes.  This can too easily
be abused and made source and stream of biased opinions.  If a
moderator passes an article and wants to correct something they should
repost.

Section 7)

>7) Moderator Body

>When there is a shortage of moderators, the remaining moderators
>select willing volunteers who are participants in the newsgroup and
>whose posting history shows understanding of and respect for the
>moderation policy.

Horrible!  Not only life terms, but moderators then get to select new
moderators.  Totally undemocratic, and oligarchic.

So the supposed joke between proposed moderators about inheriting
moderator positions wasn't so much of a joke.

Nothing could be clearer that moderation is about one group taking
control of discussion and shielding its ideology and practice from
criticism.

Elliott Coates
--
                :=***=:   VOTE  NO  TO  MODERATION!   :=***=: 
CRAFTISM SHOULD NOT USE USENET RESOURCES TO AVOID CRITICISM!
              MODERATORS SHOULD NOT HAVE LIFETIME TERMS!
        :=***=:  Objective  *  Pre-code Modelling  *  Holistic  :=***=:
                      Hallmarks of the best SW Engineering
  Study Phony Crafite OO vs. Genuine OO: http://www.access.digex.net/~ell
    Copyright 1998 Elliott. exclusive of others' writing. may be copied
      without permission only in the comp.* usenet and bitnet groups.