There are a few well established rules for web site editors:
The first web editor rule - which is so basic it really even doesn’t need to be in the list below – is that the editor is responsible to ensure that all reader/user fights are conducted in public (on the web, never in private emails) – to provide the “protection” to the reputation of each fighter which public voyeurism allows.
The LIST
1. The editor is always at fault when a fight erupts between web readers – especially at fault when the editor has had fair warning.
2. The person who starts the fight, and the person who says the other person started the fight, are not responsible – the editor is responsible for allowing the person to start the fight.
3. Once the person who starts the fight starts the fight, then there are no rules governing how low the person who says the other person started the fight can go.
4. Some people really like to fight so the editors are to blame if all fighters are not each provided with the satisfaction of winning the fight.
5. The editor must ensure that every reader/user is be fully socialized before they participate in a web site, and if the reader/user is not fully socialized to the norm which satisfies all the other reader/users, then the editor is at fault.
6. The editor must realized that ”execution” of a user is just virtual on the web, so “execution” by the editor of any unpopular user is a healthy socialization tool.
7. The editor has to have the confidence to know that once a user is “executed”, the user will immediately become socialized to the norm expected by the other reader/users of the web site so that the once un-socialized-but-now-socialized user will not place any objectionable content on the next web site to which they post – they will be cured – and a Google search will never find any further reputation-damaging unpleasantness.
8. In a well moderated web site, the moderators/administrators/editors know they are doing a fair job when they are threatened in private correspondence and on line with lawsuits from all sides of every “fight”.
9.The editor should always accommodate the expressed will of the contingent of reader/users on the most popular side of every issue - that is unless the editor has been threatened more aggressively from the less popular side of the issue and is pursuaded by the aggression.
10. The editor should never hesitate.