Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:
You gave us another example of why charters that restrict moderators' ability to reject posts are good. In soc.culture.russian.moderated we had a similar problem (now resolved completely), when certain anonymous posters posted articles that looked like articles from newspapers.
Since not a lot of people on this list read soc.culture.*, I'll give a slightly different view of how Igor's moderation works in practice.
The charter of s.c.r.m prohibits flames and gratuitous obscenities. However this rule is not enforced. Certain friends of Igor (including some of the s.c.r.m moderators) habitually cross-post articles between soc.culture.russian.moderated, soc.culture.russian (unmoderated), and a dozen other newsgroups saying things like: "<The s.c.r FAQ maintainer> is a cocksucker and a motherfucker and has been arrested for sexually molesting small children". The targets of the flames are not permitted
That is incorrect on several counts. First of all, our charter does not prohibit flames. It prohibits harassment and spells out what should be considered harassment: Charter> Posts of the following types shall be off-topic in Charter> soc.culture.russian.moderated: Charter> Charter> 6. Harassing posts (of the typical form "[...] is a Charter> [Nazi|pedophile|forger|...]. Complain about [his|her|its] Charter> evil ways to [ISP|employer|Unesco|Cthulhu|Usenet Cabal|...]." Charter> Charter> The proponent recognizes the distinction between patriotism and Charter> jingoistic hatemongering. Further, the distinction between Charter> good-natured jokes and harassment is necessarily subjective. The Charter> moderators will use their best judgement to extend unbiased and Charter> thorough consideration to submissions. Charter> Second, nobody on scrm called Alex Iatskovski, whom you mentioned above as SCR FAQ maintainer, "cocksucker", "motherfucker", or "child molester". In fact, Dejanews search and my private archive indicate that words cocksucker, motherfucker, molester were not used at all in our group. Note that I do not suggest that s.c.r.m. moderators are always fair or always right or that we always interpret our charter correctly or that our charter is perfect. The proposal and practice of moderation is controversial. As you and I know, there are cases when we think that moderation is justified, and there are cases when we think that it is not justified.
to respond on soc.culture.russian.moderated (there's a "blacklist" of people whose submissions are junked automatically, w/o a human moderator ever seeing them).
This is, again, incorrect. Neither Alex Iatskovski nor any other person associated with you has ever been on the black list. The purpose of the black list is not to ignore people whom we do not like, but to prevent mailbombing of moderators. - Igor.