The misuse can take several forms - the forums get monopolised by very vocal individuals who crowd other information out; they are frequently treated as a private verbal playground or an electronic grafitti wall; or are used as an outlet for plentiful but irrelevant messages, including commercial spams; and even are made into battlegrounds for tender but very opinionated egos etc etc.

Since the repeated Listowner's appeals to the sense and sensibilities of the 'transgressors' most of the times tended to be ineffective, from the 1 December 1997 the electronic fora operating from MAJORDOMO@COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU address were turned into a moderated lists, that is lists where all messages to the List are inspected, tidied up and approved by a moderator before they reach the wider community of subscribers.

The current team of moderators for our set of lists comprises (in alphabetic order):

• CENTRAL-ASIA-STUDIES-L - Shahram Akbarzadeh (polsa@luff.latrobe.edu.au)
• CENTRAL-ASIA-STUDIES-L - T. Matthew Ciolek (tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au)
• CENTRAL-ASIA-STUDIES-L - Haydn Ross Rippon (944369x@bud.cc.swin.edu.au)

• SOUTH-ASIA-STUDIES-L - T. Matthew Ciolek (tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au)
• TIBETAN-STUDIES-L - T. Matthew Ciolek (tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au)

Moderation of a mailing list is a gentle and necessarily imperfect art. It requires careful balancing and adjustements between three rather incompatible variables:

1. the integrity of the raison d'etre of the electronic forum itself - the list needs to remain pertinent, coherent and elegant;
2. the integrity of messages written by the subscribers to the list - the original messages need to be as little censored/edited/annotated as possible;
3. the need to minimise amount of time a moderator spends on managament of the intellectual traffic on this list - the moderation has to be as as simple and as quick as possible;

The following notes (may I have your suggestions for improvements, please ?) are an attempt to establish a balance between these three sets of conflicting considerations:

• Moderators take turns (say a month at a time) in handling the email traffic;
• All messages sent to this list are automatically directed to the moderator's email box;
• The moderator sends them back to the list, once the following steps are accomplished :
  • First line of the body of the message carries an approval code, eg.
    Approved: [the appropriate password is inserted here]

  • Second line is blank;
  • Third line carries the date the message originated from the sender, eg.
    Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 11:31:16 +1000
  • Fourth line carries details of the sender, eg.
    From: polsa@network.abc.xyz.edu

  • Fifth line is blank;
  • The subsequent lines carry the body of the submitted message, followed by the sender's signature block (if supplied).

  For example:

  Approved: [password is inserted here]

  From: Charles Teller (acteller@eol.com)
  Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 12:19:44 +0900

  Colleagues,
  As many of you know, there has been a rash of scholarship over the past few years which has taken an extremely negative view of the Kyoto school in particular, and Japanese Buddhism in general. Much of this material has been .... etc. etc.

• A few rules of thumb regarding moderation of the submitted message:
  • if the text is neat and crisp - then it is reposted verbatim;
  • if it is messy - then its layout is somewhat tidied up, made more legible. However, do not fix spelling or grammatical errors, authors are entitled to having their mistakes left alone. If you know that the message contains an error of fact, do say so in a spot with the comments from the moderator;
  • if it is full of verbiage and replicas of a complete text of the earlier postings - then edit out the redundant fluff, with every attempt made to keep the resultant reply/comment meaningful.
    Always remember to indicate your editorial interventions, eg. [... snip ... (mod.)]
  • if the message is offensive, plain stupid, or irrelevant - then the inappropriate message is blocked in the entirety (i.e. killed). Get in touch with the subscriber and explain politely and briefely the reason for stopping the message from reaching the community of subscribers;
• Make sure that all messages are always attributed to (= traceable to) their author;
• Make sure that external messages (i.e. not for the subscriber) if posted to the list are marked as such;
• Make sure that the Subject line carries a standard code followed an angular bracket followed by the subject matter details:
  • CONF>
    announcement of seminars, workshops, conferences,
  • NEWS>
    details of events, lectures, retreats, sesshins, developments etc
  • QUERY>
    request for information
  • COMMENTS>
    answers to the questions asked. If more than one comment is re-posted than indicate the no. of such comments, eg. COMMENTS> subject matter - 4 items
  • RESOURCE>
    details of new & related web sites, databases, mailing lists etc. This category applies only to the online sources of information
  • ADMINISTRIVIA>
    housekeeping messages from the list administrators to the subscribers
  • INTRODUCTION>
    biographical/interest notes from new subscribers
  • BOOK>
    details of new printed publications
  • JOURNAL>
    details of new printed serial
  • [other codes, if necessary, may be added to this list]

• Make sure that unless you, as the moderator, add/subtract some information to the message, the approved posting should go *without* your usual signature block;

• Make sure that if you added/removed any information from a message that indicate the nature and place of your operations;

• If you decided that Comments to a Query should go to a private email address, instead to the list as a whole, make an explicit statement to that effect and clearly indicate the address to which information should be directed;

• Aim at the quickest possible handling and processing of the messages.

  I am looking forward to suggestions for improvements to the above 'traffic rules'. Also, please contact me if you would like to help with making the coombs.anu.edu.au lists a really outstanding informational asset.

  T. Matthew Ciolek (tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au)

  23 December 1997

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