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.