On 23 August 2017 at 05:03, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Hi list members,
The list admins (hereafter 'we', being Austin, Asaf, Shani and I, your humble narrator) regularly receive complaints about the frequent posters on this list, as well as about the unpleasant atmosphere some posters (some of them frequent) create.
It is natural that frequent posters will say specific things that more frequently annoy other list members, but often the complaints are due to the volume of messages rather than the content of the messages.
We are floating some suggestions aimed specifically at reducing the volume, hopefully motivating frequent posters to self-moderate more, but these proposed limits are actually intending to increasing the quality of the discourse without heavy subjective moderation.
The first proposal impacts all posters to this list, and the last three proposals are aimed at providing a more clear framework within which criticism and whistle-blowing are permitted, but that critics are prevented from drowning out other discussions. The bandwidth that will be given to critics should be established in advance, reducing need to use subjective moderation of the content when a limit to the volume will often achieve the same result.
...
The RFC is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/wikimedia-l-post-limits
However please also feel welcome to reply on-list if you wish to express explicit support or opposition to any of the four proposals above (please identify them by number, to ease counting). We will count votes (here and on the meta RFC) after two weeks, and post a more refined final version back to this mailing list.
The list administrators will default to *enacting* all four proposals, but will refrain from enacting any proposal receiving more opposition than support. -- John Vandenberg
The RFC has yet to be closed, after being open for over five months. Could someone close it or reject it?
In practical reality, the hardline talk about posting limits, seems to have resulted in significantly reduced posts to this list. The statistics are somewhat worrying, casting doubt on the long term future of this list staying active or interesting.
The standard statistics [1] show participation is at a record low. My sense of the list is that real content discussions are now minimal, with announcements and thankspam outnumbering thoughtful observations or critiques.
Picking out one trend to illustrate, here are comparative numbers for last month against other Januarys in the last few years, which is a simple way to compensate for seasonal variation: 2018, 139 posts 2017, 370 posts 2016, 989 posts 2015, 445 posts 2014, 571 posts
Rather than increasing negative bureaucracy on the list to stop people posting too much, perhaps the list moderators have some views on how to positively encourage people to engage with the community here?
Links 1. https://stats.wikimedia.org/mail-lists/wikimedia-l.html
Thanks, Fae