I looked in and saw what Alex means...however...

I have NO doubt that if needed, to lend support or to give expert
advice...

this group will drop everything in a SECOND and come to the aid of
someone in need.

They have been there for me during the worst time of my life...and I
trust them.

It doesn't matter WHO you are when PCa affects your life...and I KNOW
that this group knows it.

Best to all,

Ron B.

Chicago

I use my eyes, brain, and fingers to moderate what I read. The minute a
thread goes bonkers, I don't look at it anymore. I could filter it, but
it's usually simpler just not clicking on it. I don't even see many of
the posts I see people complaining about until they're quoted by a
complainer because I take the additional step of PLONKING the worst
offenders individually (e.g., trolls, spammers, snake oil nutjobs,
stalkers). I haven't seen Fagbemi or the Ironman for many months now.

While I support moderating some behaviors, moderation usually comes with
prices I don't support. Examples include biases, slowdowns, and flat
weird ideas of what's acceptable. I used to be very active in a Yahoo
group until the moderator openly stated that asking a poster to support
a statement of "fact" is grounds for expulsion.

I was surprised how much I concurred with the set of rules J tries so
hard to enforce in her forum -- they are exceptionally well designed and
worded, IMO -- but we see how well her diligent efforts actually work in
the real (virtual) world. For a prime example of how strongly even
DENIED moderation biases results, look at what the vast majority of our
print and broadcast media does to the "news" we see.

I.P.

 Against censorship here. It's really easy to just ignore or skip by the
spam. Guaranteed someone will complain about subject matter here at least
once a week. We get pretty graphic, and having thawt freedom here is very
important.

I am a "facilitator" of one of the pioneer internet prostate cancer
discussion groups, the Prostate Problems Mailing List (PPML), founded
in 1995. We are a "semi-moderated" email group - only subscribers who
repeatedly violate rules of civility, post off-topic material, etc. are
placed in moderated status - everyone else's posts go directly to email
distribution and our archives web page. Usually we don't place anyone
in moderated status unless they have refused to respond reasonably to
our requests by private email that they observe our very modest rules.

"Semi-moderation" is not an entirely happy compromise with the quandry
of whether to moderate or not, as we do have occasional break-outs of
relatively high volume flame wars etc., usually when we have been a
little too slow at appreciating that dialogue had deteriorated beyond a
certain breaking point, but generally things do hum along fairly well.
We have a number of veteran subscribers who have been continuing
valuable contributors for many years, and for a few years now, our
number of subscribers has been holding at around 1300.

Back in the mid 1990's, I looked in on alt.support.cancer.prostate, and
at that time there was a very low volume of messages on this group. I
presume that a major reason for this is that the old command line
interface newsgroup software was somewhat cumbersome. Volume was much
higher on the PPML email group, so I focussed all my online attention
on this group. (I became a facilitator of the list in 2003.) I was
surprised to discover a few months ago that alt.support.cancer.prostate
now greatly exceeds our list in volume of posts, and as far as I have
explored these posts, it appears to me that a very high percentage of
them are legitimate, meaningful messages. My assumption had always been
that at least some degree of moderation was necessary to prevent an
email list, web BB, or newsgroup from falling into chaos, but
apparently, as several have said in this thread, it is possible to
browse for meaningful material in a reasonably efficient way, and avoid
wasting time with trash messages.

But much may depend on chance coincidence. A few years ago a very
active email discussion list group hosted by the Prostate Pointers
organization (not affiliated with our list) called "The Circle" (a
specialized topic prostate cancer emotional support focussed on
emotional support) did become so contentious that the administrator had
to shut down the list for a period of time until she could regroup and
re-establish the list as a fully moderated group, and it remains as
such today. This places a heavy burden on the moderator, Nancy Peress,
who must remain tethered to her computer throughout the day in order
that there is not too much delay in approving messages for posting.
Nancy is a remarkably dedicated and fair moderator - she manages not
only The Circle, but several other specialized prostate cancer lists as
fully moderated lists, most of which are very active and thriving.

After having observed the kinds of troubles that The Circle, our email
list, and other groups have experienced with postings of problematic
messages, I was astonished to discover that alt.support.cancer.prostate
has survived as a completely unmoderated list, and even surpassed all
other groups in activity. I would assume that this was partly due to
random causation - apparently by chance no crises ever reached such a
degree of severity that they rendered the list inoperable. Also, a
large core of veteran subscribers have learned to browse messages
selectively in order to separate the meaningful from the unmeaningful.
But I would imagine that the browsing may yet be somewhat tedious, and
in this respect, our moderated and semi-moderated lists may be more
convenient for some subscribers.

And on the PPML, we do continually remind our subscribers not to
cross-post.  :-)

Charles Clausen

I belong to other moderated groups and MLs  and it seems to me like
they're all run by the same mgmt.  You always hear the same few
doctors, treatments and ideas mentioned.  I feel like I'm having deja
vu all the time!

Nothing sinister about this, but in the above category I include PPML,
yahoo pca ng, prostate pointers, ustoo.org, prostateforum.com,
pcri.org, LEF,  etc.  Also, there is a lot of free advertising.
Recently there was a conference chaired by dr charles snuffy myers (Oct
21) and as the deadline approached the msgs in these forums became more
shrill and more ubiquitous.  Basically, they said If you don't register
for this NOW -- and yes, there is still time, we are saving a place
just for you -- you will turn into a pumpkin or whatever...

This is the only group where I feel I can really breathe.  I don't have
to tailor my opinions so that the bosses will like it.  Having
moderators chills free speech.

So please leave the group as is -- if you don't like something somebody
says you can criticize it.

Also, I am a newbie and I find managing my ngs and mls totally
confounding.  For god's sake I am such a newsgroup virgin i am going to
look up the word "flame" in the I-net dictionary after i finish this.
So a lot of this net jargon flies right by me and other people.
(Filters, flame, kill-file, MS Outlook, etc.) If people prefer things
done a certain way just tell us.

Anyway, how do you know precisely what's on- and off-topic?   The best
post I saw yesterday was o-t i suppose because it posed the question,
"why didn't A.Q. Khan" choose radiation instead of surgery."  Almost
died laughing.

I think this is a community of PEOPLE which transcends the subject and
if people want to be OT now and then why not?

Best to you all.

Leah