Field Notice on Room Moderation Watching
Observation of live audio room moderation has become a distinct activity, separate from participation in the room being moderated.
FIELD NOTICE Subject: Emergence of Moderation-Watching as Primary Activity in Live Audio Rooms Observation Period: January through June 2021
The field notice documents the following observation: a segment of live audio room attendees is not attending the room for its stated topic. They are attending to watch the moderation.
This requires explanation.
Live audio rooms operate with a host and, in most cases, one or more moderators whose function is to manage speaker queue, mute disruptive participants, and maintain topical coherence. The moderator's work is typically invisible when performed well. When performed with difficulty, it becomes visible. When performed with visible difficulty in real time before an audience of several hundred people, it becomes the event.
First consequence: moderator behavior has become legible as performance. The participant who silently watches a moderator struggle with a speaker who will not yield the floor is watching a genre. That genre has conventions. The runaway speaker who cannot be interrupted. The moderator whose mute function requires three attempts. The co-host who is technically asleep but listed as present. These are not disruptions. They are installments.
Second consequence: the moderator is now aware of being watched as a moderator. This produces a secondary behavior layer in which the moderator performs moderation for the watchers while also performing it for functional purposes. The mute is both a tool and a statement. The gentle redirect is both a technique and a bit.
Third consequence: rooms with competent, invisible moderation are less compelling to the segment under observation. Smooth facilitation offers nothing to watch. The room proceeds. Topics are addressed. The absence of incident is the incident, which is not an incident.
Absurd rule, documented: a room can be well-run or interesting to observe, rarely both simultaneously, because the conditions that produce interesting observation are the conditions that produce poor management, and the conditions that produce smooth management eliminate the material that observation requires.
The moderator is the content. This was not the intended architecture.