Moderators are not always chosen or supported by the community. Many sites have discussion forums that are there primarily in support of the main purpose of the site, rather than being its main purpose. Frequently the site owner moderates those forums, or selects trusted community members to do so — e.g., hierarchy rather than community determined their status. But they still moderate, in that by default comments are posted and then only removed if necessary (according to the moderators). This seems to me to be a step along the continuum.

Continua being what they are, it’s easy to move along them without meaning to. Your musing on the topic reminded me of the value of regularly evaluating the roles one’s playing and encouraging others to play — pausing (in this case) to ask: Am I moderating or gatekeeping? Am I acting in a way that will engender the community I want to see?

Thanks for that.

Leadership is key.

Any organisation, whether community or commercial firm, exists to achieve some common objectives. Allocates resources to achieve them. Prioritises and reprioritises as needed via active feedback loops, which may be external as well as internal. In the case of open communities, behaviour that militates against the common values of that community needs to be minimised. But with soft hands.

So maybe we’re back at semantics. I see gatekeepers and controllers as more heavy handed, more exclusive, than you do.

I am uncomfortable with the exclusions, because they have a greater negative effect than is intended.
Thanks for the comments.

It all depends on what the community is “for”. As hyper-actives fade away, for whatever reason, and a group of actives become the next hyper-actives, the “community” may be seen as a vibrant, active and evolving space. All very enjoyable.

But what if you want to get something actually *done*? If you find that the Judean People’s Front has evolved into the People’s Front of Judea what do you do? Hugh MacLeod, who can hardly be accused of “not getting it”, had to become a gatekeeper to facilitate a discussion actually making progress.

If a community exists only for its own existance – and so many blogs and blog groups are just that: mutual appreciation societies simply enjoying a meandering chinwag – then the “order out of chaos” evolutionary approach is obviously enjoyable.

But what if you have a vision of of something you want to acheive? Wikipedia, the darling of the 2.0 sect, is dying simply because the energetic have bullied out and bored the knowledgeable.

Moderation / Gatekeeping is not an either / or. There’s a continuum that includes: order from chaos, emergent community, moderation, gatekeeping, leadership, control (though maybe not in that order)

I would like to think that to keep getting read, you simply need to say something of value once you’ve been ‘A-linked’.

But I suspect that sadly the frequency with which you continue to be A-linked is a more important factor. Indeed the fact that your citations are all mutually-linking A listers seems to back this up!

What would be really interesting is a Technorati Rank timeseries plot showing gainers/losers in the top 100 over time. This would illustrate how entrenched the A list really is…

On the linking power bit, I have some reservations. When I was a salesman many years ago, I used to tell myself “Any fool can get AN appointment with some big luminary in a buyer, the challenge is to keep getting them, especially when you need them” .

I think the same goes for being linked. When an A-Lister links you in to his or her blog, it gets you read. Once. But to keep getting read you have to say something of value, be a servant to your community. Goes back to what Chris Locke, Doc Searls and Hugh Macleod have been saying for a long time now.

So if a blogger is only as good as his next post…..

Keep that debate going. Ian, Stu, thanks for “dropping by”.

The blogosphere is a partially egalitarian place. The ability to publish may be completely democratised, but the ability to get one’s publications read is not.

To claim otherwise is to perpetuate (knowingly or not) Carr’s ‘innocent fraud’.

The ‘A’ list may be so by accident, but an ‘A’ list they are nonetheless, by Technorati rank, Google rank, Feedburner subscription count or any other measure. They are simply the group of bloggers who are consistently the most linked to and the most subscribed to, and the list seems quite static (which is understandable since those new to the blogosphere commonly rely on these metrics to determine which blogs to subscribe to, perpetuating the ‘A’ list).

They are gatekeepers of the blogosphere in the sense that their linking behaviour determines, to a large extent, who is read and who is not. Though they may wield this accidentally-acquired power benignly, it is significant power. An accidental gatekeeper is a gatekeeper nonetheless.

Ironically it wasn’t until Nick Carr’s piece provoked such fierce (and in some cases highly personal and vitriolic) criticism — and explicit link-witholding — from some ‘A’ listers that I began to consider how their power could be misused.

If the blogosphere is to continue to flourish then its ’1000lb gorillas’ must actively defend the right of newcomers to challenge even its most cherished myths.

Moderators only work effectively in your holy grail if they have permission / consensus to do so. What if the actives overwhelm the hyper-actives (either by weight of numbers or by infighting / boredom of the hyperactives – both happen)?

To stop the community being destroyed the outnumbered moderators have to increase their influence by becoming gatekeepers – enabling good contributors to florish in a space free of the work of tidying up after the bad.

Anarchy never works in the long run but lawful societies do (modulo those making the laws being benign of course – but then the electorate is the gatekeeper to the law-maker’s power).