> Please, advice a junior on whether going private & moderated.
 
Froom your description, it sounds like you need it, and immediately.
 
> Would a votation from the subscribers be good ?
 
It might be good take a poll, where the answers are sent privately to you,
in order for you to get *advice* on your next steps.  But given your
current situation, DO NOT put this up for discussion before taking action,
otherwise (it appears) you will lose all you had hoped to preserve.  Go
into moderation immediately, at least temporarily, I'll urge you, and then
tell your subscribers that you're seriously considering making it
permanent, and you'd like advice on that next step sent *privately* to
your personal address.
 
If you put it to a vote first with no other immediate action, there are
many who will (1) argue that there shouldn't be a vote because there
should never be any moderation, (2) try stall you for time by saying that the
question you've asked is incorrect and should be re-worded, (3) etc.  From
what you've written, this kind of debate will apparently tick off the many
"seniors" who you're trying to preserve on the list.
 
> What are the less good aspects of moderating in your opinion ?
 
It may take up A LOT of your personal time.  And if timeliness may be
important on your list, then remember that whenever you're not attending
to the moderation, there will be a delay in the discussion.
 
Also, to be a good moderator you will need to constantly review whether
you are making judgments from your personal point of view or instead from
the point of view of the needs of the discussion group.
 
> What are the implications of moderation on "Freedom of Speech" ?
 
Few.  Freedom must always be balanced with responsibility.  An extreme in
either direction will be destructive.  Given your original vision for your
list, the list's behavior has become extreme w.r.t. freedom.  If other
people wish to create a new, unmoderated list on your topic, they are free to
do so.
 
Consider this:  if your professional peers decided to hold an in-person
conference in the usual fashion with a set agenda, proceedings to be
published, etc. -- would the chairman of the meeting allow members of the
public to step up and say anything they liked at any time?  Even to the
point of disrupting the meeting?  If that were allowed, then the
professional society might never be able to accomplish any business.
 
At a professional meeting, the public (1) might be barred from attending,
(2) might be allowed to attend but not to speak, or (3) might be allowed
to speak IF there is sufficient extra time, but even then only at the
discretion of the chairman, whi has a duty to see that the professionals'
time is not wasted.  Similar policies may be appropriate for your list.
It is appropriate for a professional society to have its meetings chaired
and discussion rules enforced.  Similarly, you have a right -- and
actually, a duty -- to moderate your list when necessary.  No need to be
inconfident about it.
 
> Is dicatorship the only solution ?
 
Dictatorship may be too harsh a word (depending on your moderating style).
Please do not think of moderation as necessarily being a dictatorship,
even though some will insist to you that it is.
 
You do have other options.
 
One is that you can greatly limit the members of the list to only those
who have a *professional* interest in the topic in question.  Although
there may be difficulty in converting an already established and
openly subscribed list to the narrower kind I'm describing here, in
concept you could have a list limited to professionals.  To implement this
(and the following example is for a newly created list), you can set
Subscription= By_owner and then send a standard message to each would-be
subscriber saying that this is a professionals-only list, and request that
they provide information about their professional standing, and ADD them
after they've provided that info.
 
Another alternative to consider is something I've considered for a
professional list I've created.  You can create TWO levels of list
membership -- read-only AND those who can discuss.  To do this, you'll
need to create a 2nd list which will interrelate with the first.  This may
sound complicated, but bear with me for a few moments.
 
Have a GENERAL list for the public which anyone can subscribe to, but
which the public cannot post to because you don't set Send= Public.  In
your Welcome message you say that DISCUSSION privileges will be granted
only to professionals, and if you want those privileges, fill out the
following form which asks for your professional affiliation and send it to
the list-owner.  State a rule that if you lie about having a professional
affiliation, you may be deleted by the list-owner.
 
Now, you also have a 2ND list which is for those who are privileged to
discuss.  That is Subscription= By_owner and you ADD those who appear to
be qualified professionals.
 
To make this system work, you set the GENERAL list to Send= Editor and you
set
 
Editor= Owner
Editor= (2ND-LIST)
 
With this set-up, everyone sends messages to the GENERAL address.  The
2ND-LIST people get automatically posted, because they're "editors".  The
non-priviliged GENERAL subscribers will have their posting sent to the
list-owner, who can write back to say they're not privileged as yet,
so why don't you apply.
 
In fact, the public need never know about this 2ND-LIST, which might
be better since it may only confuse them.  They just need to know that
you've got some means of distinguishing between privileged and non-privileged
subscribers.  For the 2ND-LIST you can set Confidential= Yes and have
a Welcome message for that list saying "you are now priviliged -- send all
postings to the GENERAL list address".
 
One thing I'll mention about administration of this system -- I won't be
regularly checking the credentials of those who apply for privileged
status (that could be VERY time consuming).  Instead, I'll post rules
saying (1) if you're not credentialled as you said on your application,
you may be immediately deleted, and (2) those privileged members who
suspect that one of our number is not actually qualified per the rule may
tell the list-owner about this concern privately, who will then check it
out and proceed accordingly.
 
 
So between the simple subscribe-by-owner system and the slightly elaborate
system just described, you have more options available to you in the long
run that just hands-on moderating.  But in your given situation, I
recommend that you go to temporary moderation immediately while you
consider your next steps.
 
-- Roger Burns   [log in to unmask]