This is one of those times when having an alternate and smaller list helps, as this little side discussion took place totally on hleickables. Naturally, Mike jumped in supporting Heresy. Didn't mind that. What I did mind was that Mike accused us of silently rejecting posts. Now, my personal policy is to never reply to people trying to flame you. You can't have a flame war if one side doesn't participate and it's people who are not confident about their image in the group that reply to the flamebait.

But, I didn't want people to think that the HLML Admins would act anything but on the straight and level with the members. So I replied to hleickables, not to defend my decision about Heresy (I emailed him separately), but to explain the HLML Admin policies regarding moderation and rejecting messages. Leicky once again defended me and after everyone calmed down they at least realized that I had to do what I had to do to protect the HLML.

I kept the HLML moderated for a week and a half until I was convinced that everything had died down again. So I unmoderated the list on Friday. The following Sunday or Monday, Cal, in her unmistakable style, decided to leave the HLML. Not quietly though, somehow I can't picture her ever leaving a place quietly. She posted a nicely inflammatory message calling everybody a bunch of losers for still following Ms Leick and for believing Mike's lies.

Let me explain Cal a bit, from my perspective. In the summer of '98 she was an assistant HLML Admin along with me. For some reason she built up this whole conspiracy theory that Dan had it in for her and didn't trust her at all. Really, it was more of a "Dan and I, being technical people, understand the concept of varying responsibility levels." I've always been a proponent of Dan having all the power and the other list Admins being Operators, having less power. Dan was more into the "everybody has power, but follow these rules please." So Cal complained loudly on the list and left, leaving behind a bit of a flame war. I believe that was one of reasons we finally decided to start implementing *some* list moderation.

When Cal finally resubscribed, I really tried to be fair to her. She went through the standard one month probation period and then she was unmoderated just like any other standard shmoe. Even though I knew how volatile she could be I still gave her the benefit of the doubt and didn't moderate her (and the same applies to Matt for that matter). So that Monday is when it backfired as Cal left another bit of a flame war in her wake.

Once again the list was moderated. People tried to reply to Cal's charges, some a bit too vehemently for my tastes. But I let just about everything through again. The problem with moderating a whole list like this is that people still need to be heard, to be able to refute and vent a bit. So even though some of the messages were a bit strongly worded, I don't think anyone insulted Cal so I let them through and the thread died a couple of days later.

Being a list admin is a tough job sometimes. I have to balance freedom of speech with the responsibilities that freedom entails, which few people seem to acknowledge. Freedom brings the responsibility to use that freedom wisely, which a lot of people don't understand conciously, but at least most people obey subconsciously. Some of my decisions were wrong or mistimed or whatever, but I stand by them. It's weird what can happen in a public forum and this is only my perspective, but I felt I needed to write this down, if at least to bury my frustrations of that two-week span of time.