On 06/09/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/5/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 9/5/07 7:29 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Feel free to disagree with me all you like, but I find we're very tolerant of a lot of crap spewed onto the list - even those on moderation often have their messages approved.
Once again, you are illuminating the problem, John. You are subjectively deciding for us all, what is "crap" and what is not. Don't you get it!?
on 9/5/07 8:55 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
We get it alright. But you're presenting yourself as the only person who really knows the right way to do things, and you don't. A couple days ago you didn't even know that lists have owners, and now you're trying to tell everybody how to run a mailing list. Well I'm sorry, but you simply don't know enough to have any credible opinions on the subject. Why aren't you willing to listen to the voices of experience? This is not a Wikipedia thing, this is a problem common to all online projects, so much so that moderation capabilities are built into the list management software! I'm willing to cut you some slack, because I'm interested in alternate viewpoints, but please show some respect in return, OK?
I am not here to fight with anyone. I have absolutely no personal or professional stake in any of this. And the idea that I have an agenda (as someone suggested) is absurd.
Stop flailing at the messenger, and open you mind to the message.
Marc Riddell
I think you do have an agenda, but it's one of wanting to protect the project and mailing list from making itself too insular and not realising it.
In defense of Marc; this is a real concern for online projects. The degree to which the project insiders are unaware or uncaring of external viewpoints varies widely from project to project (and on something as big as WP, from area to area, list to list, etc). But it is a very real and well known effect in online cultures as well as real ones.
I have several times spoken out for a need for high quality gadflys on the list and around Wikipedia in general. People in a position to and willing to call us on stuff we communally get wrong or get into groupthink on are an important protective measure for the project. We've had a tendency to not develop them, which is unfortunate.
What we do have, effectively, is people playing that role in specific areas where they see a problem, but otherwise generally fitting in well with the list community and wider WP community.
I spent over a decade moderating Usenet groups, and have done similar roles for mailing lists before. I understand people's desire to have a moderated list.
That said, I would like to encourage everyone to think about whether our current policy is making us sufficiently available to hear some gadflys and be aware of them or not.
I think that the answer is probably that things are "ok" - Cheney and Blowfish and a few others still get postings through, whether they're moderated or not. And we don't appear (from what's on the list and what I've seen in private emails) to have a problem with mainstream participants being moderated much except when they go on an irrational rampage, which can happen.
That said, it's reassuring to those of us concerned about this if there's an open dialog about moderation, and I agree with Marc's sentiment that knowing who's on moderation would assist in clarifying the situation.
I understand the privacy issues involved with the list of those moderated being private at this time; I tend to agree that the benefit of the list and community as a whole may tend towards making it public, though.
This is not my top concern about WP this week, but it is somewhat worrying. I would urge further calm discussion regarding the legitimate need for openness and the privacy tradeoffs involved. That current formal or informal moderator policy says that you can't make the list public or give it to Marc doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to discuss whether that policy is a mistake and should change.
The thing that is really annoying about this is that I don't think we have an easy way of anonymously polling those on moderation to see what they think about their status being "outed", if we change policy.
Nobody has publically stood up and made a statement so far. Perhaps we can ask if anyone on moderation is interested in creating a new free account somewhere and signing up for the list and sending us just a quick note about whether you feel the moderation list being public is ok with you or not? Moderators, I hope you'd be ok with letting these through...
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Note: Using patches may involve upgrading to the development version of Mailman, if such patches are written.
1. If a patch were to be written for Mailman-side killfiles, for individual users, would the patch be used? 2. If a patch were to be written for a user preference for a moderated user to be able to decide if s/he wants to appear on a public list of moderated users, would the patch be used? (The default could be set to 'no'.) 3. Mailman already has the ability to not archive publicly. Would not archiving publicly reduce tension on the list? Should this option be changed? 4. Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used? 5. Are there any other possible patches that might be used?
On 07/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
- If a patch were to be written for Mailman-side killfiles, for individual users, would the patch be used?
I don't know what a "killfile" is.
- If a patch were to be written for a user preference for a moderated user to be able to decide if s/he wants to appear on a public list of moderated users, would the patch be used? (The default could be set to 'no'.)
I suppose, if the Wikimedia developers wanted to put something like that on, and people seemed to want it. Keep in mind there are a lot of things we'd like a patch for, and the Wikimedia developers haven't done anything about them up until now. Their interest in modding MailMan always seems pretty much nil, unfortunately.
- Mailman already has the ability to not archive publicly. Would not archiving publicly reduce tension on the list? Should this option be changed?
There's always that option, but the mailing list is already mirrored on other sites like Gmane too, and there's theoretically nothing stopping someone subscribing to the list and setting up their own public archive.
- Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?
People tend to quote other posters' posts fully, so I don't know that that would be all that successful. It would have to be well-written to strip all that sort of stuff out.
- Are there any other possible patches that might be used?
There is a way, buried deep within the admin interface, to auto-discard messages matching a specific Regexp. I know nothing about regexps, but frequently wish I did, because it would help us cut down on a lot of the V14GR4-style spam. Which almost never reaches the mailing list but outnumbers genuine messages from real people in the moderation queue by a factor of about 20 or 25 to one.
~Mark Ryan
On 07/09/2007, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
On 07/09/2007, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
- If a patch were to be written for Mailman-side killfiles, for individual users, would the patch be used?
I don't know what a "killfile" is.
A killfile dates back to the nearly unmoderated USENET. Sure, there was the USENET death penalty, but that wasn't used very often. A killfile basically allows individual users to specify the addresses of those they do not wish to received messages from. Basically, what Marc and Peter have been recommending, but instead of having to skim, messages from people you don't like need never appear before you. You could also match by other criteria, e.g. subject, other header info.
Any halfway decent email client should have some sort of killfile implementation. In Google Mail, for example, this functionality is provided via filters. However, since some people might have bad email clients, this could theoretically be done on Mailman's side as well, where a user could log in to Mailman and ask Mailman to not send him or her email matching certain criteria. Note that Mailman could only control email sent via the list itself - only a client-side killfile could filter mail sent directly to an individual. Still, moderation can't do any more than that anyway.
A killfile type system of message control would probably work better if public archival were turned off, as public archival may make users feel pressured to respond to messages they would otherwise ignore.
- If a patch were to be written for a user preference for a moderated user to be able to decide if s/he wants to appear on a public list of moderated users, would the patch be used? (The default could be set to 'no'.)
I suppose, if the Wikimedia developers wanted to put something like that on, and people seemed to want it. Keep in mind there are a lot of things we'd like a patch for, and the Wikimedia developers haven't done anything about them up until now. Their interest in modding MailMan always seems pretty much nil, unfortunately.
Mailman was not written by Wikimedia developers, but by Mailman developers - the Wikimedia developers need not be involved. Besides, I am offering to try to write the code, if you are interested in having it, which would make me the developer. (Alternatively, I guess I could just submit a feature request to the Mailman project, but then there would be no guarantee that anyone would try it, or that they would try it any time soon. Still, it's a back up plan if I can't figure out how the Mailman source tree works.)
(Note that it's Mailman, not MailMan.)
However, any such patch would most likely be added to the development version of Mailman, meaning the Wikimedia server administrators would have to upgrade. If you don't think they could be talked into that, and that you would use it, then I am most likely not willing to spend my time on this.
- Mailman already has the ability to not archive publicly. Would not archiving publicly reduce tension on the list? Should this option be changed?
There's always that option, but the mailing list is already mirrored on other sites like Gmane too, and there's theoretically nothing stopping someone subscribing to the list and setting up their own public archive.
Gmane would theoretically stop mirroring if you stopped archiving, no? Of course, there is no way to ensure security, but you do at least have control over the official archive.
- Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?
People tend to quote other posters' posts fully, so I don't know that that would be all that successful. It would have to be well-written to strip all that sort of stuff out.
Hence not publicly archiving anything would probably be better. Still, consider partial public archiving a third possibility.
- Are there any other possible patches that might be used?
There is a way, buried deep within the admin interface, to auto-discard messages matching a specific Regexp. I know nothing about regexps, but frequently wish I did, because it would help us cut down on a lot of the V14GR4-style spam. Which almost never reaches the mailing list but outnumbers genuine messages from real people in the moderation queue by a factor of about 20 or 25 to one.
~Mark Ryan
Specifically in Configuration Categories > Privacy options > Spam filters.
Could you be specific? For example, would you be able to send me a large sample of the sort of spam you want auto-discarded (not to this address) - particularly the headers, I don't think Mailmain looks at the message content itself - along with you present Spam filtering policy (privately)?
You might have better luck running running the mail through SpamAssassin *before* it hits Mailman. You would have to talk to the Wikimedia server administrators about setting that up. It's far better than anything one could do with the Mailman regular expression interface.
On 08/09/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
There's always that option, but the mailing list is already mirrored on other sites like Gmane too, and there's theoretically nothing stopping someone subscribing to the list and setting up their own public archive.
Gmane would theoretically stop mirroring if you stopped archiving, no? Of course, there is no way to ensure security, but you do at least have control over the official archive.
Not archiving would hamper the utility of the list to the project. Remember that this is a work list for a particular project; having old messages in an official, referable place is way too useful in practice. There is no reason I can see that is helpful to the project to stop archiving.
- d.
On 08/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Not archiving would hamper the utility of the list to the project. Remember that this is a work list for a particular project; having old messages in an official, referable place is way too useful in practice. There is no reason I can see that is helpful to the project to stop archiving.
- d.
Next option: 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?' (quoting self from earlier)
On 9/8/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Next option: 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?' (quoting self from earlier)
This is a public mailing list that is archived for a reason.
-Matt
On 09/09/2007, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/8/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Next option: 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?' (quoting self from earlier)
This is a public mailing list that is archived for a reason.
-Matt
*shrug*
USENET groups are also public and have the X-No-Archive header for a reason.
Armed Blowfish wrote:
On 08/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Not archiving would hamper the utility of the list to the project. Remember that this is a work list for a particular project; having old messages in an official, referable place is way too useful in practice. There is no reason I can see that is helpful to the project to stop archiving.
Next option: 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?' (quoting self from earlier)
Having a patchwork of archived and non-archived material would produce silly results. If you opted out, just imagine how meaningless the flames that you have received would be without the original context. ;-)
Ec
On 09/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Armed Blowfish wrote:
Next option: 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?' (quoting self from earlier)
Having a patchwork of archived and non-archived material would produce silly results. If you opted out, just imagine how meaningless the flames that you have received would be without the original context. ;-)
Ec
;-)
Messages can also get torn out of their original context when they are read years after the fact by people using search engines.
Let's take a trip into USENET history, shall we? USENET was originally highly transient - messages posted to newsgroups disappeared from public servers in weeks. Then enter the public archive - searchable, people can still find out what you said on the spur of the moment a decade ago. Enter Deja News, and the X-No-Archive header for those who still wanted that old transience. Enter Google, who bought Deja News and changed the implementation - rather than not archiving at all, archive for 6 days, and then the message disappears.
This article may be of interest: http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/technology/07NECO.html?_r=5&oref=slo...
On 9/8/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Armed Blowfish wrote:
On 08/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Not archiving would hamper the utility of the list to the project. Remember that this is a work list for a particular project; having old messages in an official, referable place is way too useful in practice. There is no reason I can see that is helpful to the project to stop archiving.
Next option: 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether or not they want their messages archived? If a patch were written to grant this capability, would it be used?' (quoting self from earlier)
Having a patchwork of archived and non-archived material would produce silly results. If you opted out, just imagine how meaningless the flames that you have received would be without the original context. ;-)
Ec
A mailing list that serves a purpose to discuss issues of a public site, such as Wikipedia is, should always be straight archived. Allowing opt out and other options gives moderators an Orwellian option that I can't see any point in.
KP
On 07/09/07, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
There is a way, buried deep within the admin interface, to auto-discard messages matching a specific Regexp. I know nothing about regexps, but frequently wish I did, because it would help us cut down on a lot of the V14GR4-style spam. Which almost never reaches the mailing list but outnumbers genuine messages from real people in the moderation queue by a factor of about 20 or 25 to one.
I put a couple of regexps on it already, to silently dispose of stuff that scores more than 7 points on the Wikimedia mailserver's spam detector. What you're seeing in the mod queue is the stuff that's *left*, about a third of what it was. Most mail, by message count or volume (certainly by volume) is spam.
- d.
On 08/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 07/09/07, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
There is a way, buried deep within the admin interface, to auto-discard messages matching a specific Regexp. I know nothing about regexps, but frequently wish I did, because it would help us cut down on a lot of the V14GR4-style spam. Which almost never reaches the mailing list but outnumbers genuine messages from real people in the moderation queue by a factor of about 20 or 25 to one.
I put a couple of regexps on it already, to silently dispose of stuff that scores more than 7 points on the Wikimedia mailserver's spam detector. What you're seeing in the mod queue is the stuff that's *left*, about a third of what it was. Most mail, by message count or volume (certainly by volume) is spam.
- d.
Do you want me to try to improve on the regexps? If so, I need a large sample of the spam that is getting through, as well as a copy of the regexps you are currently using.