When you say good cross section, do you mean you would like to mix up long time CS members with newer CS members? If so, I think that would be a good thing and would tempt me to stick my toe in the conversation once again. When I briefly visited here back on DU2 it was not a very welcoming environment. I hope that changes because I enjoy a little CS and would like to participate once in a while.

I figure it will hopefully curate better content.

What happened to the process that was described for choosing hosts?

There was a set of guidelines for how a group *might* self-organize. However, this forum is a bit different as it is well known for being extremely polarized. Skinner wanted us to make sure that it was organized evenly which is why I am now the primary host for the group as I moderated this forum for over 10 years and am fairly familiar with its ins and outs.

I am currently seeking cohosts for this group who represent the wide spectrum of members. I am primarily interested in people who 1) Have shown some affinity to this group and to DU and 2) Do not have a history of personal attacks or disruptive behavior. Beliefs do not matter so long as they have not involved promotion of hateful memes (such as the Jews/Israel did it, or promotion of groups/sites which represent such beliefs) which is obviously contrary to the core TOS.

My goal/hope is that such a group will be able to prove effective at self-policing things by removing the confrontational element and by providing a set of consistent expectations.

It's a reasonable exercise of discretion by the admins, IMO.

I've been hoping this new place will have discussions that are less dysfunctional and therefore more interesting. In my mind this would require either some additions to the SOP for the group or else something that amounted to the same whether or not the SOP was where they were recorded. I think this may be difficult to implement and would likely require a good deal of subjective judgement on whether certain types of posts tend to foster interesting discussion or, in the alternative, tend more toward inanity, flamebait, name calling, or else somehow leading to discussions that people care only about winning but don't really gain any insight or knowledge from.

As part of that I personally believe we need a balance between the two sides of the obvious de facto divide in this group to be represented fairly equally when decisions have to be made.

I'd be interested in knowing peoples' opinions (including yours) on whether this DU3 version should be substantially changed or are we thinking it will end up pretty much like DU2, in which case I'll probably not participate much.

Heeeeeeeeeeere's Lithos!



heh, To good to resist I'll send you a PM.