Announcing: Moderated global change discussion forum
Michael Tobis
We are creating a moderated newsgroup/mailing list for the discussion
of environmental science, economics, policy and politics, especially as
related to global change issues such as climate change, biodiversity,
and sustainability.
The signal to noise ratio on sci.environment and similar unmoderated
discussion lists has dropped to the point where it can no longer
sustain interesting or informative exchanges of information and ideas.
The success of the lightly moderated discussions on the realclimate.org
blog has revealed that the hunger for serious and informed discussion
remains. However, blogs do not fully replicate the broad-ranging
conversational style that usenet once supported even in
controversy-prone areas of interest.
Fortunately, new tools allow us to recapture most of the usenet
experience without going through the tedious and archaic process of
setting up a "big-eight" newsgroup.
It is difficult to specify what "fair" or "unfair" moderation means
without getting tediously legalistic. To avoid endless haggling about
this, we formulate our policy thus:
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if ANY moderator finds
the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
We are not unanimous in our opinions, and are open to submissions from
people outside the spectrum of opinion represented by the moderators.
We will endeavor to remove obvious provocations ("trolls"). We also
discourage postings that are redundant, in the sense that the poster
has already made their points and does not seem to take account of the
responses but is merely insistently reasserting points previously made.
Whether, as a consequence of this policy, you find the list useful and
interesting or otherwise is left to yourself. If you don't like our
list, by all means make your own.
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HOW TO PARTICIPATE
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I. WEB INTERFACE
Probably the easiest way to participate is to point your browser to
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/
and you can read the messages immediately.
You may send submissions through the web interface, or by email to
global...@googlegroups.com
Using the interface in this way does not require you to get a Google
login.
"Membership" is encouraged, as it permits contributors to be
whitelisted, reducing propagation delays and the workload of the
moderators. Membership does not automatically imply email delivery of
messages. Non-members may also post but all their messages require
moderation.
II. RSS FEED
It is also possible to subscribe to the newsgroup as an RSS feed. See
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/feeds
for more information
III. NNTP FEED
We are in the process of setting up an NNTP feed through gmane. When it
is available we will offer futher information.
IV. MAILING LIST
You can subscribe to globalchange as a mailing list, but you have to
use the web to sign up. Go to
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/
and click "join this group" and follow instructions.
To use this approach you will need to have or set up a free google
login.
If you subscribe to the email, you need not ever use the web interface
or your google account again. You may send submissions by email to
global...@googlegroups.com
PLEASE PARTICIPATE!
Looking forward to reviving the historically interesting and productive
conversations on environmental matters, we are,
sincerely,
your globalchange moderators:
James Annan
Raymond Arritt
Coby Beck
William Connolley
Michael Tobis