If you don’t show the system in action and provide continual justification, I think people would become suspicious when something just disappeared and wonder why that had happened. This could eventually lead to stifled conversation, because you become “the man behind the curtain.” Being completely open and upfront about it provides full disclosure and examples/reminders of what type of actions aren’t tolerated. Also, if you keep it quiet, no one really has the opportunity to challenge your moderation actions…and discussion, along with transparency, is key to a good discussion experience.

And unfortunately, name calling and profanity isn’t the only way to insult others personally. So a lot of automated mechanisms out there miss stuff. As for swearing, I learned long ago during the spam attack of July 08, which involved endless repetition of the word “f*ck”, that the worst profanity goes immediately to moderation.

On the topic of communal decision making or perspectives versus individual ones, the classic problem-solving scenario is the team exercise where you are marooned on the moon. Used in business education and other team-building areas, the “game” requires that individual members of the team select the items from the marooned mooncraft’s inventory to take on a survival trek to a moonbase or rescue point. After individuals have made their selections, the team member’s each bring their list of preferred items prioritized and reach a consensus on a prioritized group list. Invariably, the group list is better aligned with NASA experts survival recommendations than any individual list.

The reason I bring this exercise up is that I believe the best civic or community decisions result from a healthy combination of individual learning/study of a problem or question and collaborative debate or consensus-seeking. I guess my point is that blogging does create a place for both and is a very healthy environment for civic discourse to peculate.

As for moderation, I think it is essential to have on blogs but also equally essential that it be barely noticeable and to the degree possible, enforced through automated mechanisms such as “karma” or other rating systems. If we can simply keep name calling and profanity off the table, the discussions tend to be very productive.

Dem, divorcing the conservation movement from the GW/CC argument is the right way to go. While I love the idea of hybrid cars, every time I see a Prius, I can’t help myself from wondering if they are truly trying to conserve resources or just wanting to be in the “in” crowd.

Rick, I am not religious; just about the furthest thing from it. And I am from south Florida, where most of the people are transplanted northerners, so I’m not sure it really counts as “the south.” But you offensively dismiss a large number of wonderful and intelligent people who are religious and/or from the south. Arguments about GW/CC should not be based on religion or location; they should be about science, and the ability to prove that 1) it is really happening and 2) human activity is causing it. I’m not sure how old you are, but I have enough years behind me to remember when people were obsessed about the approaching ice age.