>>>IMO, the good moderator is the one that does not need to make interventions all the time.
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>>That's one way of describing a good moderator. Another one is:
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>>The good moderator is the one that makes a mild intervention in time.
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>>It's my hunch that things always get out of control here due to the fact that moderation has always been entirely absent here.
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>Peter,
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>You read Michel's message quite differently than I did. What I heard was him being completely fed up with what has been going on in Chatter and all the complaints to him about it. Why would he want to set up a formal structure to police it? So he could give more of his attention to a section he has lost patience with already? We are all adults and are capable of policing ourselves. I thought the "or else" part of his message was also very clear. It's up to us to fix things, not Michel.

A site owner who's fed up (your words, but he'll probably silently admit) and therefore starts to threat to remove things is actually a worse problem than thread members who are fed up, because those individuals don't have any real power over the others while the site owner does have the real power to excommunicate members. It can well be the onset of a dictatorship. If you're lucky, it is a benevolent one, but that will only be in the eyes of those who share the dictator's opinions.

Sure, we are adults. And as an adult I don't want to be mentioned childish (I recall at least Tamar mentioned 'us' childish). Neither do others here want to be called childish. And we do not want to be dealt with asif we are children. But let me remind you that the real police has not been created to deal with children. It are the adults (okay, some adults) who actually need to be policed! So, the adults here too need some, mild, policing. The moderator system I proposed should be enough.