Phyllis and I have come to favor the effort to have a moderated version
of rec.ponds.

We would like a rec.ponds where anyone can post and their content would
be the determiner of whether their post goes up. Before we began to
see so much personal animosity on rp, the posts were overwhelmingly
supportive and off-topic messages were marked 'OT'. They were mostly
friendly interaction between friends.

Sadly, we have now reached a point where the majority of the posts -
especially crossposts - are conflictual rather than pond-related. That
defeats the purpose of the group and it has been entrenched long enough
that we are not hopeful that conflictual posters will shift to
consistent constructive posting. Returning conflict for conflict
simply perpetuates and escalates the conflict.

We have come to a point that we believe a moderated group is likely to
be the only way to achieve a usenet rp group and to keep it free of the
conflictual messages.

We support the effort to have a moderated group.

I personally would like to see anyone free to post on the moderated
group. Content is the best basis for moderation. I see a problem,
however, with that. It is volume. The moderators would have a lot of
reviewing to do. It seems to me that some basic filtering/moderating
rules would be good...like crossposted messages, certain words and,
yes, suspending or banning members who persist in conflict rather than
pond messages. Pond groups simply are not intended to be places of
personal non-pond conflict. They are not intended to be one of 10
groups where a personal hostility is being launched.

Effective moderation would help members prone to conflictual messages
to exercise self-control.

We began enjoying rec.ponds in 2002. It helped us with our pond. It
built a wonderful friendship network for us. We would love to see
conflict go away and the group one again about ponds. That does not
seem likely in the forseeable future if conflict is not somehow abated.
Moderating seems to be the best bet.

For what they are worth, those are our thoughts. They are launched in
a spirit of friendship and intended to be without rancor.

Jim