As Paul Schlosser surmised, I'm in favour of moderation, but to avoid
misunderstanding I should comment that the discussion that John Woods
referred to at the beginning of his message occurred before Dr Miano's
message was posted, and was not, therefore, a consequence of it. I agree
with John that it is not reasonable to call moderation censorship: is it
really censorship to deny the $$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ pests the
opportunity to post free advertisements?) I also disagree with Herbert
that refusing irrelevant (but serious) messages is censorship: would he
cry Censorship if his monumental treatise on Wild Flowers of the
Aberystwyth Area was refused publication by the Journal of Mathematical
Biology on the grounds that it was outside their scope. Defining the
scope of a journal or a news group and requiring contributors to adhere
to it is just common sense, not censorship. I agree with the rest of
what John says, as well.
Personally, if I were moderating this news group I would exclude all the
$$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ messages, I would use some discretion for the
CD-R's at Great Price type of message (some of them, though not strictly
within the terms of reference of the group, might still be considered as
having sufficient interest for a sufficient number of subscribers), I
would accept irrelevant messages (however much I might be irritated by
them) unless they became numerous enough to be a serious nuisance, and I
would accept all messages pertinent to the news group, no matter how
stupid, confused, misleading or even dangerous I might think them. Would
this be censorship? Herbert?
To set Paul's worries at rest, I might add that in my discussion with
John I have already indicated to him (as discussion leader of the group)
that if it were the wish of subscribers, and if it appeared not to
involve an unreasonable amount of work, I would be willing to act as
moderator.
Incidentally, I may be naive, but it isn't clear to me why many people
(see for example Paul's messages) assume that moderation is a lot of
work. Am I missing something, or does it involve more than
1. looking at all the messages that come in (I do this anyway);
2. trashing the trash (I do this anyway);
3. forwarding the rest (I don't do this at the moment, but it doesn't
sound like a huge amount of work)?
The main problem as I see it is that I'm not always here, and am
sometimes away for several weeks in succession, and clearly subscribers
wouldn't be happy for the news group to go silent for several weeks just
because I wasn't around. However, it seems to me that John's statement
that "There will always be more than one moderator" should take care of
that. Of course, it may sometimes happen, around BTK time, for example,
that all the moderators are away at the same moment, but I feel that
with foresight this needn't create problems. If we were planning to
leave the group unmoderated for a couple of weeks we wouldn't send
messages first to all the $$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ people giving them the
good news.
One other point: I agree with John that this news group is beginning to
look more lively, but I notice that of the nine messages so far posted
in February not a single one is concerned with metabolism! Doesn't
anyone have any points they want to make about metabolism, metabolic
control analysis, biothermokinetics, metabolic diseases, etc.? If not,
maybe we should disband...
Athel
Home page: http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/lcbpage/athel/home_page.html
MCA FAQ: http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/lcbpage/athel/mcafaq.html
MCA chapter from my book:
http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/lcbpage/athel/fek10/mcai.html
