Nuxx:671cabb2-93c2-4a21-b434-6b3e0f663e2b@o32g2000prb.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!o32g2000prb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <671cabb2-93c2-4a21-b434-6b3e0f663e2b@o32g2000prb.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.net.news.moderation Subject: Surely the Chiark Admin is in Charge of URCM in Practice? Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:36:18 -0800 (PST) Lines: 37 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.71.49.124 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1296516978 15804 127.0.0.1 (31 Jan 2011 23:36:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:36:18 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: o32g2000prb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.71.49.124; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Opera/9.80 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5.8; U; en) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.00,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 3153 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.net.news.moderation:36590

It seems to me that, despite the protestations of the URCM moderators that there is no "Chief Moderator", that is exactly what Ian Jackson is, de facto.

While he may claim to be equal to all the other moderators, and he probably doesn't "pull rank" per se, everyone knows that he's the chiark administrator, and that he's self-admittedly prepared to withdraw the services of chiark in the event that something that he doesn't like happens with URCM (like a "hostile takeover" as he put it).

So there is a constant veiled threat towards the other moderators that if they vote to remove Jackson as a moderator, or annoy him too much in other ways, then he'll flounce off and take his ball home with him, and then URCM immediately becomes inoperable until if and when another server with appropriate software is found. That seems like a pretty powerful veiled threat to me, and so in practice, surely, Jackson carries more authority than the other moderators; people are more likely to pander to him to avoid any chance of the "ultimate sanction".

So Jackson has (quite cleverly, admittedly) got himself into a position where he is Chief Moderator in practice, but not in name, which neatly gets him out of being any more accountable than the other moderators for the many ludicrous "moderation" decisions that we've all become familiar with. I guess that's just another URCM problem which can't be solved with anything short of an RFD, but that's how I see things anyway, unless I'm missing something?

A related problem is that, as administrator, Jackson is privy to information that the other moderators aren't: for example, he could find out who had voted which way in "secret" ballots (and quite possibly form grudges against those who hadn't "toed the line"). It seems fundamentally wrong that Jackson claims to be "just another moderator" while having so much extra leverage through being the admin; he should either get someone else to take over as admin (at least in relation to URCM), or officially become the Chief Moderator.