Moderation

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 26 May 2009, Clay Weber wrote:
>On Tuesday 26 May 2009 9:06:45 am Thorny wrote:
>> On Tue, 26 May 2009 13:18:53 +0200, Myriam Schweingruber posted:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > as we repeatedly asked people to respect the mailing list guidelines and
>> > the etiquette [1] without effect, we will now put moderation flags to
>> > everybody who doesn't respect those rules.

And your 'community' will fade away.

>> Well, Myriam, I must not be seeing all the posts from this list because I
>> don't remember any wealth of posts to that effect. I haven't seen these
>> repeated posts, which you mention, that explained all of that (from either
>> "we" or you). I have seen you make comments (often they seemed sarcastic
>> to me) in your replies to posts. Talking to people as if you were their
>> school teacher, which appeared condescending to me. I have seen you
>>post a simple comment, another thread hijack, when the poster might not even
>>know what you are referring to and I've also noted you replying to a
>>different thread hijack with a helpful comment (de facto approval), that 
>>isn't consistent enough for a moderator. You too need to follow the 
>>guidelines if you want to lead by example. Those are just a couple of 
>>examples but, in general, I think it would be better if you isolated your 
>>help replies from your moderation duties and followed the guidelines as 
>>strictly as you want them followed.
+1
>> > This means for most of the list subscribers nothing will change, but a
>> > few here will have to be patient to get their posts approved by the
>> > mailing list administrators for some time. That flag will be taken away
>> > once it's not necessary anymore.
>>
>> Will this be arbitrary or will one have to actually violate one of the
>> guidelines and what avenue will there be for questioning such a ban? Will
>> it be done in open in the list or in secret? Is there a panel or will
>> there just be one person making the decision?
>
>This definitely will *not* be arbitrary. We discuss this before making any
>decisions, and I for one not take putting a moderation flag on subscribers
>lightly.
>
>> > There is a mailing list for all Ubuntu flavors available [2] - called
>> > "sounder" - where random chit chat, bike shedding and such belong to,
>> > so this list here can be used for it's original purpose, namely support 
>> > for users.

And that's us the last time a user was defined...

>> So, anything *you* don't want to discuss is "random chit chat", eh?
>> Recently one of the old members mentioned that there is an effective
>> benefit of OT discussions and mentioned that it has been there for the 10
>> years he has been taking part in lists. I too believe it and think people
>> work better together if they can socialize a bit as they work.
>
>I have been using mailing list myself for almost as long myself, and there
> are ones that are fine for this as some lists are/were used  for everything
> under the sun, while others are strictly on-topic lists. In Ubuntu we have
> a huge variety of lists to choose from, and Sounder is one dedicated for
> the OT and the banter and the like. I don't consider non-support but
> Kubuntu-specific topics OT for the most part.

My email corpus for at least one list I'm subbed to goes back to 2002.  Busy 
lists, for obvious reasons get expired.  Like 640k being enough for everybody, 
13+GB of email is enough. :)

>> > Thanks for your understanding
>>
>> You will build the type of community you want, it may, or may not be
>> exactly as you envision.
>
>The community is much, much bigger than the few of us in here.

An astute observation, thank you Clay.

>We want more people joining in the discussion, and for quite some time now,
>this list has been a small handfull of people posting amongst themselves. We
>wish to gain *more* user involvement by keeping this list more support
>oriented as opposed to a general chit chat list.  Sounder is for banter and
>the like. Why not use it? (You'd probably get more responses I would think
> as well)

There is one pretty good reason for me I think.  I am already on so many 
mailing lists that the folder listing in the latest kmail is about 150% of the 
1680x1050 screens height.  So I don't just add YAML without there being a good 
reason to do so.  Since there is not the ability to arbitrarily sort the 
listing, I would much rather the important ones were on screen without having 
to use the scroll bar.  Call me lazy in my old age, I've been called worse. :)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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