Last-modified: 2001-06-10 (revision 1.5)
Posted-by: postfaq 1.15 (Perl 5.8.8)
Archive-name: usenet/moderation/pitfalls
URL: http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/mod-pitfalls.html
Posting-frequency: monthly

Pitfalls of Newsgroup Moderation
(or Things You Wished You'd Thought Of Before You Started)
Maintained by Russ Allbery stanford.edu>

So you want to propose a moderated newsgroup. Or perhaps you want to
moderate one, or maybe someone's just proposing a moderated newsgroup for
a topic you're interested in (or even proposing moderating a group that
you read).

You may want to read this before you go further.

Let me be clear about my bias up-front. I'm an advocate of moderation for
a lot of situations. I think it's a great way of improving the quality of
a newsgroup under some circumstances. I'm also the moderator of several
newsgroups myself. But a lot of people are quite fond of the concept and
results of moderation without being aware of the work and problems that
come with it. This document is an attempt to teach you about that part.