permaculture

["Robert Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>]

I have sort of missed the recent fuss in the list. 
I am enrolled in Dan Hemenway's online 
permaculture design course and am approaching the 
deadline for submitting my first permaculture 
design. So my time to read email has been pretty 
limited, since I am also doing all the other stuff 
in my life.  Anyway, among that "other stuff" is 
moderating email discussions, I moderate hmmm 25 
or so discussion groups.  Some are small and not 
very busy, but one has 6500 members and 70-80 
messages per day.

I believe that the most important thing a 
moderator can do in a public discussion group is 
protect the common good.  Other members of the 
conversation are free to have their special 
interests and such, and even the moderator can 
have his hobbies too, but my most important goal 
with the groups I moderate is to protect the 
common good, which is greater and more important 
than any of the "individual goods" that make up 
the conversation.  This alas is not an easy task. 
One thing that makes it easier is if the group is 
populated by people who are willing and able to 
exercise a high degree of self-government in 
regard to their own messages.  Generally this 
relates to staying on topic, but it also covers 
choice of language, attitude towards others, and 
ability to manage conflict.

One of the problems of internet communication is 
that it is strictly text based.  In real life, 
there are many other dimensions to communication. 
A raised eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice, 
body language, gestures, all of these can 
radically change the meaning conveyed by words. 
Internet communicators try to make up a little for 
this with our iconagrphy [icon of scratching 
head], but internet icons while helpful do not 
convey the information present in a real time, in 
presence conversation.

I don't have any recommendations to make about how 
to handle this list.  I am "recommended out" 
working on my permaculture design.  I hope these 
observations are helpful.  My general observation 
is that for an unmoderated list (that is, a 
conversation where the messages go directly to 
members rather than first being reviewed by a 
moderator), this discussion goes really well.  If 
I had time I would read back in the archives to 
see what set off this fuss, but I don't so maybe 
it was an exception but in my years of reading 
this group it seems to me to have gotten along 
together pretty good most of the time.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City