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Here are some insights gained from around 15 years of online community moderation, in varied formats.  They're mine, and are opinion and experience-based, not empirical, of course:

1.  Different online communities exist to serve different needs and goals.

2.  Achieving high signal-to-noise ratio online conversations, in order to facilitate those goals -- i.e. to have a healthy and productive online community -- almost always requires active moderation.  (See "Online Communities Rot Without Daily Tending by Human Hands," by Xeni Jardin, journalist and blogger of BoingBoing.net fame.)

3.  Being the available authority figure, the moderator will sometimes become a target for ire.

4.  (Assuming good moderation...) This ire is the individual's problem, however much transference is attempted to make it the list's problem.  (Put another way: "Come and see the violence inherent in the system!  Help!  Help! I'm being repressed!")

5.  A plethora of written "rules" to codify behavior is generally an invitation for people to try and game those rules.

6.  An online community (list, blog, group...) is not a public utility. If you don't find a particular online community useful or to your liking, you can go start your own group, list, or other form of online community any time you want.  See #1.

I hope these pointers (which I posted today on a mailing list of Society of Environmental Journalists members, in response to a kerfuffle there) are useful for fellow journalists who may suddenly find themselves in the position of moderating blogs or other online fora.

Image: Listening Post, by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, at Whitney Museum of American Art, December 2002. 
coverpoll_3326.jpgWhich cat is cutest, asks MoJo?  

Hey -- that handsome ginger tabby caught in profile is adorable, isn't he? 

Why don't you vote for him?

That he's my cat Pushkin, that I took the photo, and that I made the cover as part of MoJo's make-your-own-climate-issue-cover feature, factor only marginally into it.  

I'm a journalist, after all.  My job is to be objective about these things.

kthxbai.



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Climate Week 2009: Boon or bust?  Last week, leaders from around the world came to a U.N. Climate Summit in New York, where President Obama will gave a hotly anticipated speech on climate change and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hoped to make real progress toward a new international climate treaty.  Activists were out in force at a slew of climate-related events in NYC, and then took the show to Pittsburgh, where world leaders assembled for a G20 summit.

Here are links to my reporting for Grist and Globalwarming.change.org on both confabs.

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I warmly thank ClimateVoice and G20Voice, projects of Oxfam, for sponsoring my access to both events. 

Oxfam neither asked for nor had any editorial control over my reporting. But to help myself and several other online journalists and bloggers cover underreported issues like climate change and poverty, Oxfam enthusiastically went to bat for credentials for Voice participants, helped us to connect with sources, provided us with comfortable and equipped workspaces, and covered our travel and lodging costs.

For Grist:

To come: Interview with Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) on climate change, Congress, and the greening of Pittsburgh

For Globalwarming.change.org:


Above: Youth climate activists at march in Pittsburgh, during G20 Summit in that city, Sept. 25, 2009. Credit/Copyright: Emily J. Gertz

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People celebrated its centennial last week by jumping into the policy debate over global warming. Delegates at the storied civil rights organization's annual meeting in New York voted to adopt a resolution supporting clean energy development, curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, and policies to foster green collar jobs.

"This is a policy that was passed unanimously at our convention," said Hilary O. Shelton, the director of NAACP's Washington, D.C., bureau...

With about twice as many blacks as whites out of work across the nation, 25 percent of the nation's 41 million blacks living below the poverty line, and 20 percent lacking health insurance, issues like rising energy costs, curbing air pollution, and creating green collar jobs are not abstract issues.  Read more at Grist >