From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Subject: Re: changing a newsgroup's moderator
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 00:32:25 GMT

In article <0105011F.atf4s7@dragon.enigami.mv.com>, cory@enigami.mv.com (Cory Kempf) writes:
|> >1) Discussion is started by a straw poll.
|> 
|> By "straw poll", can we assume that this is some sort of unofficial
|> thing, e.g. no RFSP (request for straw poll) posted to news.announce.newgroups,
|> news.groups, and the group(s) in question?

No, the straw poll, or whatever you want to call it, would be official. 
Otherwise, whast's the point?

Yes, it would be posted to the moderated newsgroup, or to the associated
discussion group if there is one.  Yes, Dave Lawrence would have to get
permission from the moderator of the group to do this.  Refusal by the
moderator to allow the message to be posted, and or failure of the moderator
to respond after a reasonable amount of time, would both be grounds for
skipping the poll completely and going on to the next step :-).

|> Since this is a proposal to question the retention of a moderator,
|> the person making the proposal would need to make a case for the proposal
|> (otherwise, why would we need the change?).  

No.  The purpose of the poll is to determine if there is ALREADY enough
dissatisfaction with the moderator's performance that his replacement should
be considered.  If the person making the proposal needs to CONVINCE people
that the moderator isn't doing a good job in order to win a poll that requires
a lot less than 100 votes to succeed, there's pretty much no way a vote to
actually replace the moderator is going to succeed.

The poll posting would simply say something like, "This is a poll on whether
or not to consider replacing the moderator of newsgroup <foo>."

|> Given that, what is the difference between this new proposal and the
|> original RFD/CFV mechanism, other than the new one requiring *MORE*
|> busywork, and the other having an official notification to the concerned
|> bodies.

There are several reasons for the additional step.  I have already mentioned
most of them.  I'll list them again, for clarity.

a) If this step fails, the discussion is truncated after a week instead of
three, thus conserving bandwidth.

b) It separates the process of determining the level of dissatisfaction from
the process of finding candidates for replacing the moderator.  This is, I
think, a good thing.

c) Without the poll, under the current guidelines, the moderator in question
has to defend himself for the entire discussion period.  (I reject your claim
that the moderator doesn't "have to" defend himself in order to win the vote. 
That's not the point.  People don't tend to enjoy letting accusations be made
against them without defending themselves.  For example (just picked out of
the air, you know, no particular reason), a moderator of a controvertial group
might be accused of censorship and feel compelled to respond against that
accusation, whether or not he feels it has anything to do with his performance
as moderator.)  On the other hand, if there is a poll, and it fails, the most
the moderator is going to have to do is read news.groups and stick up for
himself for a week.  After that discussion is likely to peter out because
there's no point to it.

d) Without the poll, a moderator could be challenged over and over, without
six month delays between challenges, since the current guidelines require a
delay only after a failed vote, not after a failed discussion.

It is obvious that you don't think the initial poll is necessary.  It is
obvious that I do.  It is apparent that some of the people reading this
discussion agree with me, and some of htem agree with you.  It is also
apparent that neither of us is making any new points on this point.  Why don't
we just wait until the person who said he was going to post a set of
guidelines does so, and then conduct a poll of some sort on whether or not
people think the additional poll is necessary?  Majority rules, you keep
saying.  If more people agree with you than agree with me, then find, the poll
gets removed from the moderator change guidelines.

However, I still believe that the guidelines need to be modified so that:

a) They explicitly say that the moderator must be notified of the pending
action against his position, and spell out how that notification should occur,
and what should happen if he fails to acknowledge it or refuses to allow the
RFD to be posted in the moderated group.

b) They explicitly say that after a discussion to replace a moderator that
does not get to the voting stage, a similar discussion cannot take place for a
certain amount of time.

c) They explicitly say that they are allowed to be used to replace moderators,
rather than explicitly saying that they ARE NOT allowed to be used to replace
moderators, as they do now.

|> Your arguements about harassment could equally be applied to the RFSP
|> (assuming that it *IS* announced everywhere).  

Yes, that's true, but if the poll fails, it only bothers the moderator for a
week and then he doesn't have to worry about it for months.  On the other
hand, if there's no poll, and the discussion doesn't reach the voting stage,
he may have to worry about it for weeks, and at the end, he may not be
protected from having it happen again in another month.

Again, neither of us is making any new points.  Why is it necessary to keep
discussing it when someone has already said they are going to draft new
guidelines?

|> This new proposal is not a order of magnitude better than the existing
|> system.  Why change?

Among other reasons, because the people who implement vote results have
rejected the current guidelines as a mechanism for changing the moderator of
rec.arts.erotica.  I'll say it for the nth time, since you haven't once
acknowledged that I've said it at all (is ignoring arguments ot which you
can't respond a reasonable tactic?): Your opinion on whether or not the
guidelines can be used is irrelevant, if the people who implement vote
decisions disagree with it.  Therefore, unless you find a way to get them to
agree with you, all you're doing is spitting in the wind.

|> KISS: Keep it simple (I will leave out the second 'S').

Why?  You've already called me "morally prejudiced," a censor, and a liar. 
Why not call me stupid too?  What the heck, don't leave anything out.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens                                         jik@MIT.Edu
MIT Information Systems/Athena              Moderator, news.answers
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