The question of community engagement, especially re moderation

[Laird]

I'm going to lay this out here as a solo (founding) member of this forum, without having run it by other founding members. I am pretty sure that they would be quite comfortable having this conversation publicly though.

With this new forum, I feel that we have an opportunity to take a new (and maybe radical) approach: to be (and this is becoming my catch-phrase!) community-focussed and community-driven. Let's face it, the reason so many of us have taken the opportunity to join this forum is that Skeptiko has become decidedly non-consultative, and even autocratic: we are looking for a place where our voices are not dismissed as "whining", but are actually valued.

I am proposing, then, that all major and/or significant decisions relating to this forum are run past the community at large, and that as a community we come to an amicable consensus, rather than that decisions are dictated to the community by administrators. This includes both general moderation principles as well as any individual moderation decision which is potentially controversial. And of course, that all moderation decisions, aside from minor ones like deleting obvious spammers, be documented publicly for the community to see.

OK, that's a start. There is probably more to say, but at this point I welcome the views of both founding members as well as the community in general.