Life as a DML Moderator

[Mike Substelny <msubstel@xxxx>]

First something DeLorean-related and happy:

I drove my DeLorean many places around Cleveland over the weekend. It
turned lots of heads, got lots of compliments, and ran great. When rain
fell my doors did not leak. When heat and humidity became oppressive my
AC worked perfectly.

Now something about moderating:

I can't speak for other moderators, but I know that I reject very few
posts. I do often trim quotes from posts, trying to keep within the
"Don't quote more than one message" policy. This annoys a few "Live"
subscribers, but is very helpful to subscribers who read the Digest
version and Back Issues.

By far the most often rejected posts are personal messages. It's very,
very common for a subscriber to read a DML post and hit the "reply"
button to send a personal message. Contrary to what you expect, your
email reply button sends a message to the DML, not to the person who
wrote the post. Don't be embarrassed, everyone does it.

When I do reject a message, I always send an explanation (in the case of
duplicate message, where a subscriber accidentally sends the same
message many times, I only send one explanation). I presume the other
moderators frequently send explanations, too.

As to posts that disappear into cyberspace, that happens to the
moderators, too. In fact, during my own previous shift as moderator I
sent a post to the HALON thread. My own post disappeared, presumeably
somewhere in the bowels of Yahoo. I was moderating, and I never had the
chance to approve my own post! I have no idea how to track this, but my
personal experience says that any email sent to dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
has about a 99% chance of getting to the moderators.

On a related note, sometimes posts are mysteriously delayed by Yahoo.
When I am moderating, I sometimes notice messages delayed for many hours
after I have approved them. This appears to be completely random and
unpredictable. When I am not moderating I don't notice it, and I
presume most subscribers can't tell. But a few subscribers become
impatient when their message shows up several hours after a message that
was actually written later. When this happens there is nothing the
moderators can do, and I presume you will encounter the same problem on
any Yahoo Group.

- Mike Substelny
DML moderating team, on the job this week