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07/13/2003 Archived Entry: "Being Solomon"

Interesting times on UF. As many people reading know, I am the head moderator over there. Yesterday I was required to intervene in the choices another moderator made, perhaps for the first time. I've always liked giving as much free rein as possible over the people who volunteer their time to make the board on UF a better place.

So far it's worked pretty well. The comment board on UF (~1300 posts per day) is superb. It's one place on the web where people can be expressive, argumentative and intelligent without being pulled down to the lowest common denominator of posting idiots. The only other place that I would consider anywhere near the same are the boards at Straight Dope. The one big bonus of the UF boards is that they are mostly rated G. We have a rule there called the FYOS-safe rule - meaning that whatever is posted should be considered as to whether the poster would like their hypothetical 14 year old sister to read it. When something is posted it is 'moderated', though this doesn't prevent the people who -want- to see moderated posts from reading them. Actually, the ongoing joke is that a moderation makes people want to read the post more :)

Back to topic...I had to deal with egos...two of them of posters, one of a moderator. Two of the people I like a lot, one is consistently pushing for arguments and backbiting, in my opinion. What ended up happening is that I hit the two users with identical punishments and made it fairly clear to the moderator that there were some flaws and personal opinions affecting what should be a fairly impartial judgement. One of the users came back, understanding that the behaviour was bad. The other decided that he would disappear, unable to work within the restrictions the board placed on his and disagreeing with my ruling. Fair enough...there are plenty of places on the internet with few or no rules for him.