Re: <nettime> a note about nettime

[Ted Byfield <tedbyfield@gmail.com>]

David, one of my concerns was the haste gathering around one of
the ideas so far. Some of it was obvious, some less so — for
example, that two of the people named for a moderation team never
agreed to any such thing. In my message, I *almost* added a
request that people speak for themselves and not for others, but I
decided against it lest it seem provocative. Oh well. Do I really
need to say — in the context of a discussion about moderation! —
that "voluntelling" unwitting third parties is problematic in
several ways?

So, yes, you're right that my email involved lots of background
thinking and could be read as less than complete or candid. That
happens when you try to condense thoughts involving long experience
into a few paragraphs. Even so, I really don't see how you got from
me asking for a bit of time so we all can have a deliberative
process to a smorgasbord of clichés about manipulation and corruption.

I hope the coming conversations go a bit better than that.

Cheers,
Ted

On 15 May 2023, at 11:43, d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk wrote:

> Thanks Ted,
> It's good to get some clarification and a bit of detail about the issues going on behind the scenes. Its also great to see so many eloquent defences of the list and the list form in general in these bad times.
>
> Not to mention so much sincere appreciation for decades of work by moderators, visible, and invisible. I am not keen on the term 'janitor'. You and Felix are still clearly in charge and rightly so as you are both widely respected.
>
> I am happy to follow the advice to be patient, as those behind the scenes work to identify a way forward. But I have to say that recent discussions have felt a bit weird, rather opaque and to be honest somewhat manipulative. Its felt analogous to a teenage spat with endless - "on again off again" teasing - sprinkled with dark unspecified hints of bad faith, implied by terms by terms like "first mover advantage". This all feels a bit peculiar in the face of so many apparently open generous offers of support. I could be being naive but sometimes its good to take things at face value. Maybe you think (like Bismark) that the back room discussions and decisions are like sausages "best we don't know too much about how they are made." On the other hand maybe there's a better way of dealing with each other ?
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