I'm finished marking!

[onefixedstar]

And it only took me until 1:30am. But I still need to record the marks. I think my average is going to be too low, which worries me a little. I have never before failed so many people on a test. Perhaps I was too hard on them, but I've marked first year exams before and never had such terrible answers. (Not all of them of course--there were some good answers too. But they were far outnumbered by the bad ones.)

We had a big meeting today about the grad student listserv. Everyone seems to agree that a code of conduct is necessary to avoid future personal attacks such as occurred last week and no one there seemed to feel that they had violated what such a code would require with their postings. I suspect that may be the source of some of our problems.

It's fairly late for me, and so I'm off to bed. (And the hour is my excuse if this posting is at all incoherent. That, and many hours spent reading incoherent sentences.)

Comments

[stillvisions.livejournal.com]

List codes of conduct are nice, but they also introduce the meta-argument; people then have the chance to jump up and declare that someone else has broken the rules, and thus should be expunged. Followed by responses saying that either said post wasn't against the code, or that the code should be changed.

On a few lists I'm on, I get more mail from people scraming that post X is off-topic or against the list charter than the actual number of off-topic or charter messages.

It's really too bad that people seem unable to follow the guides of social etiquette that exist in person when they're online.

[onefixedstar.livejournal.com]

It's really too bad that people seem unable to follow the guides of social etiquette that exist in person when they're online.

It's very unfortunate.

On a few lists I'm on, I get more mail from people scraming that post X is off-topic or against the list charter than the actual number of off-topic or charter messages.

Oddly enough, I've never encountered that problem on any of the lists I'm on. Perhaps because people trust the moderators to take care of such things. In any case, our concern isn't so much with keeping things on topic (we have no designated topics) as with preventing students from hurling insults such as "racist" at other students and avoiding flame wars such as the one a few years ago that resulted in several students avoiding coming into the department at all for two years.

[stillvisions.livejournal.com]

Is the list moderated (i.e. posts approved before posting)?

It's not people not trusting the mods to stop it, it's trying to argue through the mod; by playing the "he flamed me" card they try and get people kicked from the list, or to make the other person look bad.

And people were able to not be on campus for two years and still be in school? Impressive.

[onefixedstar.livejournal.com]

No, the list is not moderated. We've been discussing introducing proper moderation, but I don't think anyone will volunteer for that role.

I didn't say they weren't on campus--only that they didn't come into the department (or attend any department events). Their advisor keeps an office outside of the department, and he gave them office space there.

[stillvisions.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was wondering how one could to that, if only to try it myself. ;)