Anthea said:
 
> Dan's desciption of how his moderating works is interesting.  It is hard
> for me to imagine, though, that anyone would volunteer to moderate a list
> like ours (even for one day a week) which receives in excess of 50 messages
> a day (and almost all of them are 40 lines or more).
 
Let me say a bit more about this.  We were running about 65
messages per day before we switched to full moderation.  It has
dropped considerable.  But I'm sure that in other ways, our list
is very different.
 
Our list is for kids between 10 and 15.  The moderators are also
kids in this age range--except for the one that just turned 16.
 
Our rules are straight-forward; there is not much ambiguity.  The
kids forward messages they are not sure about to me, but I don't
get very many.
 
When a message is OK, it is really no more work to moderate it
than it is to read it.  We are using a Unix account with elm for
the moderation.  I've defined a one-letter alias for the address
of the list.  It only takes five keystrokes to read, approve, and
delete a message (plus hitting the space bar enough times to read
through the message).
 
It *does* take longer to reject a message.  We have a set of form
letters that cover all the reasons we reject messages.  We reply,
quoting the message we got, and insert the appropriate form
letter.  One of my project this summer will be to work on the
macros we use to send the form letters.  I'm sure I can make
it much easier.
 
We don't get arguments about why things were rejected, but we do
get some questions which I answer.  I think that having a team
makes the rejections less personal--and thus less likely to
generate arguments.
 
> Here is another problem: I know it sounds ridiculous, but I get really, really
> upset by nastygrams.  In fact, I get so upset that it causes me not to take
> steps that are necessary in order to run the list well. Does anyone have a
> good way of dealing with nastygrams?
 
I'm fortunate to have a fairly thick skin--and to be working with
lists that have very little nastiness.  I think the team approach
is good here as well.  We actually have about 16 lists and a
large group of adult volunteers working with them.  When I get
tired of dealing with someone, I can dump them on someone else.
;-)  We even have a private list for the volunteers to coordinate
their work.
 
It sounds to me like you need help with the list--whatever course
you take.  And having someone else take care of the people who
insist on being nasty is a perfectly reasonable way to divide
responsibilties.  Some people would even enjoy this.  :-(
 
                          Peace,  Dan
 
<<  Daniel D. Wheeler          Internet:  [log in to unmask]  >>
<<  University of Cincinnati     Bitnet:  wheeler@ucbeh       >>