Panel moderation
John Scalzi suggests a firm hand in moderating panels after experiencing WisCon and wild_irises likes her communitarian way ...and both really miss the mark.


I moderated a panel as Wiscon a couple of years ago, and made a point of not showing up at the Green Room first to "plan" the panel ("Writing Down the War"), and made a special effort to include audience members' commentary. After all, this was 2003 and WisCon is the home of anti-war leftists (albeit ones who undoubtedly universally marched into the voting both and pulled levers for fanged, drooling Arab-killers Dean and Kerry later on) so there were many social anxieties to be expressed. The largest anti-war movement the world had ever seen had not stopped the war, and the classic left mentality of representing "the people" regardless of the minority current the left represents was actually and temporarily inverted -- millions of people had taken to the street, but "business as usual" politics ended up winning the day. (Yes, this is linked to the idea of voting for the Democratic Party.)

So, in such a social environment, people were going to talk, were going to flip out about neocons or the Religious Right or people who "don't think" "("Think!" was literally a slogan on placards at some anti-war demos) and it hardly made any sense for them to be stifled, since they simply wouldn't be anyway. And of course, we had to talk about writing too. Neither "hot leather" nor "helping the helper" were going to work.

All in all, I did fairly well. I know because a dozen people, both panelists and audience members, came up to me afterwards and thanked me for the marvelous job I did moderating the panel.

Luckily, I learned my panel moderation skills from the ISO. While the group has a somewhat-deserved reputation for "taking over" movements, especially on campuses, the real issue is simply one of organizational responsibility -- in these days of hyperindividualism as a political pose, few people are really interested in taking organizational responsibility within a movement. Organizational authority, yes but scut work? Nuh-uh. Activism is a middle-class milieu, after all. Why would people perform those duties within a movement that they hire Latin women or college interns to do at home or in the office? No reason at all, so the far left groupings often end up taking organizational responsibility, though they often do so very cynically.

From my years of handling discussions within coalitions, particularly coalitions comprised of several opposing political currents, I learned an important lesson about moderation. Moderators must cultivate a sense of disinterest from the proceedings. (Yes, the ISO considered this blasphemous too, but it works.) The problem in SF conventions is that moderators are often heavily-entrenched in the proceedings of the panel, and may have even conceived of the idea for that panel in the first place. Like that obscure college course that actually represents the professor's old dissertation work, an hour in the same room with such a person will be No Fun For Anyone. One of the other Wiscon panels I was on that year featured a moderator who handed out copies of her own (horrible) short story about "The Goddess of Free Expression" and who started literally shouting me down when I suggested that textual pornography need not hold to strict standards of either literary realism or to her little mantra of "safe, sane, consensual." My point? They're stories. Hers? THAT'S EVIL AND WRONG AND ENCOURAGES RAPE AND AT LEAST A LACK OF MECHANICAL SAFETY WHEN IT COMES TO TYING BUNGEE CORDS TO ONE'S GENITALS AND I'VE SEEN TOO MANY TORN LABIA AND HOPELESSLY DISTENDED FORESKINS AT ALL MY NERDO PLAY PARTIES FOR THAT TO STAND; PLUS IT'S ICKY! She was just too interested.

Disinterested doesn't mean uninterested, of course. It means that the success of a panel is measured only by what the panel as an entity (not just the panelists) want. Conversations can only be controlled through force, but they can be guided very well and easily through the art of the follow-up question and the interim conclusion. If someone on the panel says something very provocative, like "The West Wing represents the height of a liberal fantasy of benevolent imperialism" and half the chairs in the crowd start quaking, ask a follow-up that narrows the parameters of the comment, THEN take responses from the audience. If someone is rambling, and especially if they ever say "Well, I dunno", then help them out by saying "So what you/you all seem to be saying is [succinct conclusion]." Then you hand the thread to the panelist who has at that point said the LEAST and ask for their thoughts on another question. The trick is that everyone ends up thinking they've made their point, even when they don't have one.

A good moderator should be somewhat journalistic -- get "quotes" from people, and the job is to get compelling and interesting ones, not just the ones you agree with, but ones that "readers" (in this case, the panel-as-entity) will find interesting. If the subject speaking is too rambly to be quotable, you sum them up. If someone says something that could cause a derailment, you make eye contact with someone who is smirking but looks otherwise relaxed, and you call on them for a defusing comment. If a panelist, especially one of the many Kings of the Shitheap in the genre, gets off on one of his pet shibboleths, you undermine the way Edwin Newman used to -- interrupt briefly with a silly question about nothing. For example:

Panelist (going on for several minutes): "....and in the middle ages, WHEAT and WOMEN were the only motors of social power!"

Mod: "Pardon me, what about eggs? Did they have eggs?"

P: "EGGS! Well, the social FRAMEWORK meant that EGGS--"

ModL "Do you like eggs? i like eggs florentine."

P: "Uh...I guess I like eggs."

M: To audience: "I see a fellow egg-liker with her hand up. What do you like about them?" (points to the least aggreived looking person with hand up)


This is also useful when virtually everyone shares a major premise, like, as in the Writing on the War panel, that "Americans" are "brainwashed" and need to be "educated" to be against the war. This was interesting in that it suggested a rather profound if vulgar Idealist conception of society -- so I brought that up, again, as a question (statements reflect interest, not disinterest), and tossed the thread to a couple of materialists in the room. This was handy because it put an end to simple amplifying concepts, a la "I agree with the last speaker; my uncle is also brainwashed and needs to be educated!" "So does my sister!" "And my boss!"

The final issue of moderation involves audience members who get upset when audience members, either as a whole or singly, take up "too much time." Yes, even the Kings of the Shitheap have their willing peasant followers, and they are at the panel to hear Their Lord speak. They don't want to know from any other noodge in the audience. However, everyone is the king and queen of their own minds -- to make these people happy, just call on them once, so that they can ask their hero some asslick of a question, and be done with it. Then follow-up with a real question.


Moderation is a series of cheap tricks that evolve into a high art; but it only works on the basis of not having a personal stake in the discussion.