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Again some really interesting points. To Dao Jones I say, thanks SOOOOOO much for that  Frankly I'm tired of being the first point of call whenever there's a squabble on the board, and I VERY tired of being taken to task for months afterwards by random e-maillers for things that I've done at the general bequest of everyone.
What I am thinking about for Barbelith at the moment is a way to make the barbelith community more self-moderating - the ideal position would be where any individual could take from the board precisely what they wanted without fucking everyone else off - or so it seems to me. In order to do this, it seems to me that filtering is going to be core to Barbelith whatever happens. If you can't read everything, there has to be a mechanism in place to help you read and post to what you WANT to read and post to.
Cal and I thought about many mechanisms for this - and hopefully some of them will appear in the new version of the board should it ever be completed.
However one of the biggest problems for the board, in my opinion, is the way in which individual arseholes can take hold of the whole board and stir it up into lynching fury. I'm not saying that the board isn't right to be angry, or that the individual concerned should or shouldn't stop behaving like arseholes, but it seems to me that there is clearly some reason why this happens, and perhaps it's to do with the ALREADY IMPLICIT POWER STRUCTURE AND CULTURE OF THE BOARD AS BUILT INTO THE BOARD.
Think of it this way - at the moment the only people who have moderator power are largely unelected, do it because they have time and care about the forums concerned, are not particularly answerable to anyone and can, in principle, continue to moderate almost indefinitely.
Seems to me that we can do better than that - and the first stage is to increase the number of moderators and limit their abilities. If we require more consensus between people, then we can't accuse individuals of victimising us.
Secondly if these moderators change pretty regularly then there is less 'difference' between them and the rest of the board. Plus any abuses they make of the moderation system can be done right back on them fairly quickly...
And since they can't act without agreement from one or two more moderators those abuses will also, hopefully cease.
But more importantly (since there really haven't been many if any abuses anyway) hopefully people will be COOLER about the moderation that IS necessary.
The long-term plan is to make all themembers of the board who have posted a certain number of times over a certain period of time moderators - more people requires more consensus - and we keep in a veto so that any action that is proposed and might fulfil popular demand even as it is victimising someone, can be vetoed simply and easily. It may take some time to balance the number of vetos to the number of people agreeing to any action - particularly if the board continues to grow...
Many of the problems we have on this board IN MY OPINION are based around the fact that there is never agreement about what should be done in the occasionally difficult circumstances we find ourselves in. The whole point of functions like multiple moderators, vetoes, ignore people buttons etc is to put barbelith *completely* in the hands of the people who run it.
Let's hope they don't fumble the ball... |
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) if their response to criticism is to hit Caps Lock and flame like a flamey thing, and if they only apologize as a way of buying some time or sympathy before they start on the next round of offensiveness, that ignore button starts to look like a bloody good idea. And even when you've learned that there's some people you really shouldn't reply to, it's not always easy to just let stuff go. 