I've not noticed any real opposition to at least open archiving of
moderation rejections. Is there anything that needs to be done to
make this an official recommendation, IESG policy, or whatever?
I think we are talking about very different issues here.
We are not talking about moderation for spam or immoderate language.
We are talking about moderation to supress criticism, in the first
instance of particular spam control approaches but subsequently of
criticism of the chair's own activities both on and off list.
Ironically it was my criticism of Vernon's DCC scheme that led to
the chair's censorship. In particular I am very concerned that DCC
has the same weaknesses as blacklists in that they can be co-opted
as censorship mechanisms. Cindy Cohen of the EFF has described cases
where groups have run organized campaigns to get opposing groups
such as moveon.org blacklisted by first subscribing to the list then
making a complaint.
Unfortunately many people are weasels and it is very difficult to
stop weaselish activities. The slashdot approach may be best in this
respect, moderation is frequently malicious but it is difficult to
organize campaigns because nobody chooses to be a moderator.
So here we have kind of a recursive/self-referential situation.
Phill