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  • From: "Robert Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] question for list members: is a formalnetiquette guide fo...
  • Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 07:57:59 -0600

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





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