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From time to time, we, your Moderators of Djembe-L mail list, put out the call to you, our subscribers, for help in moderating our Djembe-L.  Here's what we do:

DJEMBE-L Moderation Notes
by R Clark, Captain of the Mod Squad

We moderators receive notice when there is a pending message in the queue at
<YAHOOGROUPS.com>. Whomever is available to approve the post will view it (in edit mode) and either leave it on the server because it is questionable (sending a "heads up" post to the other moderators) or approve it or if it clearly does not fit our guidelines inform the author why it was rejected, returning them and all the other moderators a full copy, and delete it from the Yahoogroups queue.

I send all those notification messages from YahooGroups list straight to the delete folder (in M$ Outlook Express using the "InBox Assistant" filter) the folder list tells me how many deleted files there are. If there are some then unless it is all subscription and unsubscription notices then "Djembe-L got mail".

I have my "home" page on my browser set to
< http://groups.yahoo.com/group/djembe-l/pending > this speeds things up a likkle.

In my address book I have a Cc: group to djembe-l-owner@yahoogroups.com which goes to all the Moderator's making it easy to communicate our internal correspondence.

No me too's posts or other non-content posts.

No personal conversation that is not inclusive of the other list members. As a service to our members when this happens I return it to sender from my browser (In M$ Internet Explorer 5.0: File > Send > Page by Email) Cc'ing the person they intended to reach if possible and the other moderators.

Advertising is limited to 75 words and MUST have a Web Link, and is limited to one AD per month per subscriber.

Subject line: The subject line should accurately reflect the contents of the post. For events both date and location need to appear. More than one "Re:" and the "[djembe-l]" need to be removed. It is important to have a grasp of what has gone before onlist. Because some folks will send more than once or there might be a current thread going and their subject line might deviate from the title of that thread. If the post is a true "fork in the road" so to speak then their new subject line needs to have a "[was....the title of the current thread that this is deviating from]" added or the subject line needs be changed back to the current thread title. After a new thread is established the "[was....the title of the current thread that this is deviating from]" may be deleted from the replies.

I also tend to approve posts that are in the same thread one after the other. In general I try to send the current posts to the list in an order that makes it easier for folks to either read or delete similar posts depending on their interest.

Body of the post: Any citations of previous posts needs to have the name of the poster and their email address present at the top of the citation and take the form "Member Name <member@somewhereintheworld.com> writes:". If there are more than one citation the second and subsequent ones need to say "replies:" or something to that effect. The citations need to be trimmed of
both greeting and signature and any other extraneous text and carriage returns and placed at the top of the post. The trailer from the previous post, and any advertising from the so called free email services, and any
double (or more) carriage returns need to be deleted (down to one carriage return) from the post. Also if there is some gibberish due to a mismatch of character sets (EG: apostrophes tend to get converted to garbage), this needs to be sponged off, too. If these errors are major like if the post is long or sent in HTML, I return to sender so that they may resend in PLAIN TEXT.

The rest of the body of the post is sacred. Much as I would like for folks to spell correctly, show good grammar, and so forth their mistreaks are their own and really none of my business.

In the header of the posts the bottom line that reads "From: "Member Name" <member@somewhereintheworld.com>" many times this line does not have the "Member Name" present, if possible I change it to reflect the posters user name. This is often to be found in the member details accessed from < http://groups.yahoo.com/group/djembe-l/pending > by clicking on the posters email
address. The quotes around their user name and the "<>" around the eddress are important inclusions here.

When done moderating and it cuts the muster, click approve.

Send to the list.

I hope this helps.

Blessings, ®
BACK to Djembe-L TOC

revised 10/19/2003