Perceptions of e‐moderators about their roles and functions in moderating electronic mailing lists

This paper reports on responses gathered using a probabilistic survey (n=162), to gather the perceptions of electronic mailing list moderators, or e‐moderators, about their roles, tasks, and responsibilities as list moderators. The issues explored revolve around mailing list moderators’ conceptions of their roles, their rationale for moderating or not moderating their mailing lists, where they learned their craft, and where moderating lists fits into the context of their lives. With such descriptions of the tasks and roles of practising moderators, better training could be developed for those persons wishing to function effectively as online discussion facilitators and moderators, as part of their on‐line teaching for instance. Findings confirmed previous research that moderators perceive among their roles those of a filter, firefighter, facilitator, editor, manager, discussion leader, content expert, helper, and marketer. The moderators responding to this survey cited as reasons a mailing list should be moderated as keeping the signal‐to‐noise ratio high; keeping the discussion focussed within the topic of the list's mission; keeping down ‘flames'; and digesting/editing posts. Most learned to moderate online discussion lists by watching others perform those functions ‐ rather like apprentices, and either volunteered to be a list moderator, were invited to be, or started their own lists. They report being involved in list moderation because the list is work‐related, or is part of their leisure activity, or is part of both.