The Moderator Always Gets the Last Word

[Gregory Miller]

Recently John Gilmore (gnu at toad.com) contributed:

>"I am finding that wnl's commentaries in messages are more irksome than
>helpful these days.  Partly this is because his error rate is way up; up
>to half of the recent comments, by my random accounting, are wrong in one
>way or another. ****"

All in all I think Mr. LeFebvre efforts to provide this valuable service
to us should be applauded, however, I agree with the essence of Mr.
Gilmore's assertion with an additional comment.

I think Mr. LeFebvre must bear in mind the apparent authority that runs
with being a moderator.  For those gurus out there, the transparency of
such authority may be readily apparent; for the more common class of us
(and more so for the new readers or neophytes), we respect Bill and give
his comments a default value of validity.  Therefore, one can be somewhat
shaken to discover an error in the moderator's comments.  This tends to
deteriorate whatever credibility he has built up.  On the other hand, I
appreciate Bill's apparent objectivity and ability to sustain a little
constructive criticism by supplying Mr. Gilmore's comments.

The important caveat for all of us is to remember that egos tend to run
high in this profession, and yet we are all human and subject to mistake.
Unfortunately for Mr. LeFebvre, his mistakes are more glaring because of
his visibility.  And so perhaps Mr. Gilmore's next suggestion is a very
good one:

>I would personally prefer if the moderator's comments were limited to
>pointers to answers (e.g. [[ See Sun-Spots v5n33 about this....]])
>without adding facts or opinions in the middle of other peoples' messages.
>If something really deserves comment, rather than just gossip, the
>moderator's comments should appear just like any other message in the
>digest or newsgroup -- and with the same delay.

Here, here.  There is no reason why Mr. LeFebvre cannot identify himself
as the moderator in his own separate submissions.  And I suspect that
delaying his own response an issue or two will serve a measure of
equality.  Unfortunately, due to his own hectic schedule, and efforts in
putting this digest out, he has hastily responded incorrectly; this has
dampened the effectiveness of his in-line commentary.

Therefore, I too call for Bill to carefully measure his commentary, and
reserve regular response to the standard forum and submission procedures.
A moderator's job is to keep a smooth and fair flow of information and not
to prepare it or adjust it by his own commentary so to position the
material in a light favorable to anyone.

In six years of reading netnews, I have never seen a better use of the
medium than Sunspots.  It has proven its worth time and again.  All in all
I think Bill LeFebvre has made an outstanding effort in an otherwise
thankless service support type position.  Keep up the good work, but
measure your response - perhaps the less said, the better.  We know you
are one of the ranking experts and it doesn't need to be proved at the
risk of ruining credibility over a rash of goofs. :-)

Gregory Miller				UUCP:	   get-it-to!sun!nosun!cvedc!gam
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[[ Believe me, I do not insert comments like this just to inflate my ego.
I do it primarily to hold down traffic on the list by providing a
(hopefully correct) answer to a simple question.  My primary motivation
for these comments is the interests of the general Sun-Spots readership.
Take it from one who knows, anyone who moderates a list solely to inflate
his or her own ego isn't going to last very long (especially if the list
has a large volume).  --wnl ]]