I am looking for a productive mailing list that
discusses matters of
importance to the Wikimedia community. That the people on such a list can
have these discussions politely, respectfully, and with concern for others
in that the words that say, and attitudes taken. I want to see
announcements, I want to see a higher quality of conversation on what
should be a flaglist in the mailing list space of Wikimedia.
Producing civil discourse isn't easy. I was very impressed by AGF when I
first arrived at Wikipedia, and it's taken me some years to realize it goes
badly wrong in the long term; protects refined trolls, who learn to use it
as a shield against accusations of bad faith and a weapon against those of
good faith whom they manage to provoke. The opposite extreme may only work
under special circumstances --- Never assume
<https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Never_assume> works tolerably well
for en.wn, but Wikinews has the advantage that most discussions can't
meaningfully drag out anyway because most issues of contention would be
unpublished articles, which rapidly go stale and become irrelevant (so that
partial moderation of discussions is afforded indirectly by en.wn's
article-review workflow, which is more nearly objective than a direct
discussion-moderation). Arguably, AGF shows that fully distributed
moderation doesn't work, while Never assume only shows that weak direct
moderation can work if there's an external factor imposing order. The
internet is a dangerous place
<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html>
and one wants a set of rules for moderating internet discussions that is
radically inclusive of those of good faith but wildly different views,
exclusive of troublemakers, and objective enough to be enforced
consistently and successfully by many different moderators of good faith.