Hi Ener,
Thanks for the well wishes.
In drafting the guidelines, we started with existing guidelines from a source that seems to have developed an approach to moderation that exemplifies a synthesis of what works best for a publication, as well as the community. We distilled those principles into a more concise form, and I also checked a couple other places to see where we fit in to current standards. It would be great if we didn’t need to write guidelines at all, but even the expression “insulting” has generated discussion as to what that really means. Hence, we end up using an amount of words that we hope balances clarity with verbosity.
Most of our readers do not need formal guidelines because they write comments that are just fine by any standard. However, in those instances when moderation is called for, guidelines are important for several reasons. Most importantly, having established guidelines shows that our community standards are consistent and knowable in full to all participants. Some of our guidelines are for legal considerations, which is akin to most contractual boilerplate. And guidelines also help people when they get locked into a debate because they feel they need to defend themselves. If the moderator can step in and mitigate the issues by resorting to established guidelines and moderation options, it offers a clear exit strategy, whereas moderation without guidelines might feel biased, arbitrary or unfair.