On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Rick Tanner <rick at real-time.com> wrote: > Anytime there has been an issue or problem, the list has moderated > itself. > I think this works the vast majority of the time. However as we've seen in the last months (years?), there are several instances where certain users are creating more harm than good, and are driving people away from the list. It is for these specific instance that come along once or twice a year, where more heavy-handed moderation is required. > Do you, as list subscribers, want a person or people in charge of > moderating content? > I *do not* advocate full moderation of the list, nor do I advocate a situation where new list subscribers need to be "approved". What I *would* like, would be the ability for list moderators to put problem users into a penalty box of sorts, by setting enabling moderation for their account. > If so, then the list needs to agree on what is acceptable and not > acceptable to post in the list and a course of action to take when the > unacceptable happens. And another thing to keep in mind, any policy > creation will need to retroactively apply to all subscribers on the > list now. How well is that going to be received? > I think it will be received well. I don't think anyone is suggesting anything drastic. Rather, just giving the tools to a few community members to help mitigate issues that pop up from time to time. Every single other mailing list I'm on (technical or otherwise), has some form of moderation that can be imposed on problem users, or to be enabled on a very short-term basis list-wide to halt flame wars or the such. > If this should proceed, then how are moderators chosen? > I.e., nomination and voting or strictly volunteer or some other > method? How many are allowed? > I think we can put together a list of 2-3 people, bring their names forward to the list, and see if there are any strong objections. If there are, then perhaps we'll need to use a more formal voting process. And the "other duties" such as: (to name a few) > > * How are tasks tracked between moderators to make sure one does not > undo the work of the others? > * Is there a need for any kind of audit trail for moderators and > their moderation actions? > * Is there a chain of command between moderators? > * How are disagreements and policy discussion between moderators > handled? > * What course of actions can a subscriber take dispute a moderation > ruling? > * How is such a dispute handled? > My hope is that any group of moderators would be able to interact with each other in a mutually-respectful manner, not requiring all of the above questions to be fully sorted out, at least initially. With the very low moderation load anticipated, things like task tracking will hopefully not become an issue. With regards to an audit trail, I presume that mailman keeps a log of moderation actions, though I haven't fully looked into it to see if this is true. If some sort of log is required, it could take the form as something as simple as a Google Spreadsheet (perhaps with a web form front-end) that moderators use to log moderation actions. -Erik -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20140401/a05a70c7/attachment.html>