i'm for a list moderator.

i lived in cooperative for 6 years.  we operated completely by consensus,
as Joy has recommended.  that is everyone stays in the room until everyone
agrees on what to do about said issue.  in a house of 20 people that
sometimes took some time and just because all opinions were heard didn't
always end in the best overall outcome.

from those years it became clear that while it is important for all to
have input that decisions are most efficiently made by well a small group
of well informed people or person that can act quickly and in the overall
best interest of the group.

in the past i have also been a member of the type II list and while i
abided by their rules i thought that at times they were a bit much.  i
enjoyed our fridays but also enjoyed that after friday the hammer dropped
and it was back to business about vanagons.

perhaps i look at the issue through rose colored glasses but it seems that
what most want is a moderator that moderates in the old way.  no new rules
and charters just enforce what were by proxy the old list rules.

1.  posts must have vanagon content.

2.  fridays are for off topic chit chat that is connected to vanagon
'community' stuff.

3.  asshats were warned for smaller community disruption, if they repeated
they were filtered and or temporarily suspended, and finally if they
couldn't get their act together were banned from the list.  in addition to
that certain extreme infractions resulted in immediate banning.

seems that under those basic rules the list flourished from a small group
of telnet users to 1000 plus members.

jonathan