Goodness knows most people who are fully engaged in a mailing list get involved in an unproductive discussion or argument from time to time. My main assertion about Sandy is that although he has his likes and dislikes (and is not shy about sharing them) I can't see him bouncing messages just because someone was disagreeing with him. There might be someone who is less opinionated, but I think that you need to find someone who cares enough about a subject to be interested in moderating it (one antonym of "opinionated" is "dispassionate" -- think about it.) The only way to tell if Sandy will be fair _as a moderator_ is to give him a chance. Years of knowing him as a friend, and four months of sharing an office indicate that while he's stubborn and opinionated, he's also extremely fairminded, and will not bounce for content he disagrees with. He also has a broad concept (some might argue too broad) of acceptable list topics, but since we're looking primarily to screen out the worst dreck & outright spam, he seems like a logical choice as moderator. I don't see this move as censorship of any sort -- cleaning the Augean stables is more like it. I am profoundly tired of wading through completely worthless and vapid trash accusing Tim and John of various sexual perversions. (Note that if the writers actually knew these folks, they'd at least be able to write better or more interesting libel.) At 10:35 PM 1/6/97 -0800, you wrote:

Douglas Barnes wrote:

...

1) I've known Sandy for a couple of years, and I trust him to use good judgement as a moderator. It will be important to develop guidelines so that the job can be rotated, but it's also important that the moderator be someone who doesn't have any major axe to grind. Sandy has his personal likes and dislikes, but I don't think he'll ever stoop to tossing out opinions that he disagrees with.

Wishful thinking, Doug. Sandy will take an emotional (non-objective) position on an issue, and argue it beyond any reasonable limit. I wish I had all his replies to things I've said - you'd see what I mean.

Not to promote anyone who I might not be a friend of, but, there are people on this list who are "well respected" who are light-years ahead of Sandy in areas that are important for a list moderator.

Maybe Gilmore should have publicly announced for a moderator, and then let the subscribers pick....