My previous posting about moderation was a comment about censorship, and my
guess that there probably was no serious censorship on WSN that was causing a
drop in messages.
However, the other criticism, that of a long time-lag between posting
and appearing is a different issue and a serious one. On a list which I
"moderate", I check it several times/day, so that there is never a time-lag more
than a few hours.
I have only "censored" one relevant posting in about seven years (it
was abusive and libelous)---on the other hand, I "reject" about fifteen
messages a day (that would be A LOT of e-mail clutter for each
listmember) for offers for phony "commissions" if the reader will help an
African heir hide his/her departed-dictator-daddy's inheritance if you just send
your bank account number, telephone, and social security number--------- or for
CHEAPER MORTGAGES---------- or a "pyramid scheme"
where you send five dollars to each of 6 people and you will receive $420,000
within a week---I even saw one that took PayPal (a kind of credit card)
--------or a chance to buy a CD with 120 million e-mail addresses on it so that
you can flood the internet with schemes like that one--------------or a chance
to buy pills to increase the size of a man's.....er, we'll just leave that one
alone.
Of course, it all depends on who is doing the "censoring", I suppose. But
the time-lag problem...that could be serious. On another (moderated) list, PSN,
there are three moderators, and again, the time lag is seldom more than a few
hours.
I don't have an answer to WSN, but I did want to put those thoughts into
the discussion.
Alan Spector