[PLUG] No to moderation

[Eric Harrison]

On 29 Nov 2003, Michael C. Robinson wrote:

>Because people are told to moderate themselves, it makes sense 
>to debate whether or not moderation should happen to the list 
>itself.

PLUG is a loose-nit group that has a wide degree of variance in
experience, opinions, and expectations. The only way we are all
going to get along is to accept these differences. We've managed
to get along with each other, more or less, for the last 10 years.


Moderating the list so that it aligns with a particular set of
members' views, morals, political leanings, emacs vs vi, etc, is
a bad deal. 

I disagree with a number of the people who post on PLUG. But
that is part of what keeps PLUG interesting to me. If everyone
here was exactly like me, I would quickly get bored and leave.


The alternative is that we self moderate. Occasionally someone
will step out of line, that is the price we pay to keep this
an open forum. Freedom always comes at a price.

If PLUG is too free-wheeling, or you can't tolerate the opinions
of some of the posters, there is always the freedom to vote
with your feet. There are a million other Linux/open source/free
software forums.


-Eric