Posted by AF on March 16, 1999 at 14:07:17 {MW4z4H0.5soKM}:
In Reply to: Proposed FPP Amendments posted by Rick on March 16, 1999 at 10:14:37:
Thank you for finally taking these much needed steps!
: (1) Moderators must first issue a warning to all but the most flagrant FPP violators before proceeding to delete subsequent violations.
I agree with the spirit of this. However, you should clearly define what you mean by "most flagrant". Otherwise nothing will have changed.
You might give some examples of what you mean, or list specific categories of what you want allowed and what you don't.
Of course, even such a listing would result in the classic philosophical problem typified by the question "How do we define pornography?"
I will suggest that a variation on the 80--20 rule be made part of the FPP: If a moderator thinks that 80% of the participants on H2O would agree with his deletion, then delete the post. This would also give you, as the only active H2O administrator, a quantifiable way to measure moderator performance: in cases you feel are questionable, a vote could be taken. It would not take many incidents like this to force either abusive moderators or posters into line because it would force them to publicly explain themselves. You could decide on what to do about abusers who fail to explain themselves; many options exist.
: (2) Moderators must give a reason for each deletion to protect and save harmless H2O from accusations of censorship or violations of free speech.
Excellent.
:NOTE: H2O is attempting to implement a field in the Moderator Tools next to each posting requiring that the moderator fill-in this field with a reason for post's deletion. The field would be formatted into a text database showing the post, date, moderator number and reason for deletion; and available to the public.
I'm not entirely sure what this translates to in terms of where this "text database" goes, but one possibility is to use it in place of the deleted post. In other words, the original post goes to the deleted bin, and the moderator's text file takes its place. That would preserve the original structure of the thread and allow for easy deciphering of what was deleted and why. Specifically, if the moderator tools put the "text database" in the file:
database.m52.temp
and the original post is in the file:
123456.html
then the these Unix commands would do the trick:
mv 123456.html 123456.deleted.m52.html
mv database.m52.temp 123456.html
I'm sure that other housekeeping chores need to be done, but I think the above idea is clear.
As for requiring moderators to post reasons for deletion, once again you need to be very specific: "violates the FPP" is not acceptable, nor is "line 22 violates the FPP", nor is "violates section 1.2.3 of the FPP". You should require reasons to include something like "line 22 of the post violates section 1.2.3 of the FPP because ..." I know that some moderators will scream bloody murder about such a requirement, but it's the only way you're going to get abusive posters and moderators to behave.
AF