After reviewing the comments of foundation-l participants over the last few days, we've come up with a few changes that we hope will ultimately improve the tenor and scope of discussions.
To start, we're placing two participants on temporary moderation: Thomas Dalton and WJhonson. The conversations that have been most problematic recently were those that involved one or both users. We do not intend to place them or any other users on permanent moderation at this time, however.
When appropriate, we will be using moderation more often, for short periods of time when we feel doing so will allow cooler heads to prevail. The idea behind moderation has never been punitive, but it's often been treated as such by many, and as a result, we have not used it as often as we could have. Going forward, our intent is that being placed on moderation should not be viewed as a slight, or as a punishment, but as a way to retain civility within a discussion.
Second, we're adding a "soft post limit" that, for the time being, will kick in at 30 posts per month. At that point, we will, at our discretion, place members on moderation for the remainder of the month, and will approve posts only where we feel they are useful and add significantly to the discussion.
With these changes, our goal is not to stifle anyone, but to avoid the situation where a few voices dominate the conversation, and the arguments, often off-topic, that have inhibited important discussions recently. We do not feel, for example, that specific users need to be permanently moderated; however, all users, including prolific posters, should bear in mind that should their posts become off-topic, overly argumentative, or uncivil, they may be moderated temporarily.
We leave open the possibility that other changes may be useful in the future, so ideas for improvement going forward are always welcome, either at the Meta page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l or via e-mail, at foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org.
As of this post, the list is now unmoderated. We welcome your thoughts on this issue.
Sincerely,
Austin Hair Ryan Lomonaco
On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.comwrote:
After reviewing the comments of foundation-l participants over the last few days, we've come up with a few changes that we hope will ultimately improve the tenor and scope of discussions.
To start, we're placing two participants on temporary moderation: Thomas Dalton and WJhonson. The conversations that have been most problematic recently were those that involved one or both users. We do not intend to place them or any other users on permanent moderation at this time, however.
When appropriate, we will be using moderation more often, for short periods of time when we feel doing so will allow cooler heads to prevail. The idea behind moderation has never been punitive, but it's often been treated as such by many, and as a result, we have not used it as often as we could have. Going forward, our intent is that being placed on moderation should not be viewed as a slight, or as a punishment, but as a way to retain civility within a discussion.
Second, we're adding a "soft post limit" that, for the time being, will kick in at 30 posts per month. At that point, we will, at our discretion, place members on moderation for the remainder of the month, and will approve posts only where we feel they are useful and add significantly to the discussion.
With these changes, our goal is not to stifle anyone, but to avoid the situation where a few voices dominate the conversation, and the arguments, often off-topic, that have inhibited important discussions recently. We do not feel, for example, that specific users need to be permanently moderated; however, all users, including prolific posters, should bear in mind that should their posts become off-topic, overly argumentative, or uncivil, they may be moderated temporarily.
We leave open the possibility that other changes may be useful in the future, so ideas for improvement going forward are always welcome, either at the Meta page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l or via e-mail, at foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org.
As of this post, the list is now unmoderated. We welcome your thoughts on this issue.
Sincerely,
Austin Hair Ryan Lomonaco
As a spectator of most of the nonsense that goes on here, I think it's great that the list admins are finally doing something about it. Hopefully these steps will be sufficient.
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
After reviewing the comments of foundation-l participants over the last few days, we've come up with a few changes that we hope will ultimately improve the tenor and scope of discussions.
To start, we're placing two participants on temporary moderation: Thomas Dalton and WJhonson. The conversations that have been most problematic recently were those that involved one or both users. We do not intend to place them or any other users on permanent moderation at this time, however.
When appropriate, we will be using moderation more often, for short periods of time when we feel doing so will allow cooler heads to prevail. The idea behind moderation has never been punitive, but it's often been treated as such by many, and as a result, we have not used it as often as we could have. Going forward, our intent is that being placed on moderation should not be viewed as a slight, or as a punishment, but as a way to retain civility within a discussion.
Second, we're adding a "soft post limit" that, for the time being, will kick in at 30 posts per month. At that point, we will, at our discretion, place members on moderation for the remainder of the month, and will approve posts only where we feel they are useful and add significantly to the discussion.
With these changes, our goal is not to stifle anyone, but to avoid the situation where a few voices dominate the conversation, and the arguments, often off-topic, that have inhibited important discussions recently. We do not feel, for example, that specific users need to be permanently moderated; however, all users, including prolific posters, should bear in mind that should their posts become off-topic, overly argumentative, or uncivil, they may be moderated temporarily.
We leave open the possibility that other changes may be useful in the future, so ideas for improvement going forward are always welcome, either at the Meta page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l or via e-mail, at foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org.
As of this post, the list is now unmoderated. We welcome your thoughts on this issue.
Thank you for taking these steps to promote a more balanced participation here on foundation-l.
-- John Vandenberg
You have my thanks as well. I have found the topics and 'signal' on f-l recently quite good reading; less noise will make the whole experience a pleasure again (and hopefully will bring back voices that have temporarily left).
SJ
On 11/14/09, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
After reviewing the comments of foundation-l participants over the last few days, we've come up with a few changes that we hope will ultimately improve the tenor and scope of discussions.
To start, we're placing two participants on temporary moderation: Thomas Dalton and WJhonson. The conversations that have been most problematic recently were those that involved one or both users. We do not intend to place them or any other users on permanent moderation at this time, however.
When appropriate, we will be using moderation more often, for short periods of time when we feel doing so will allow cooler heads to prevail. The idea behind moderation has never been punitive, but it's often been treated as such by many, and as a result, we have not used it as often as we could have. Going forward, our intent is that being placed on moderation should not be viewed as a slight, or as a punishment, but as a way to retain civility within a discussion.
Second, we're adding a "soft post limit" that, for the time being, will kick in at 30 posts per month. At that point, we will, at our discretion, place members on moderation for the remainder of the month, and will approve posts only where we feel they are useful and add significantly to the discussion.
With these changes, our goal is not to stifle anyone, but to avoid the situation where a few voices dominate the conversation, and the arguments, often off-topic, that have inhibited important discussions recently. We do not feel, for example, that specific users need to be permanently moderated; however, all users, including prolific posters, should bear in mind that should their posts become off-topic, overly argumentative, or uncivil, they may be moderated temporarily.
We leave open the possibility that other changes may be useful in the future, so ideas for improvement going forward are always welcome, either at the Meta page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l or via e-mail, at foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org.
As of this post, the list is now unmoderated. We welcome your thoughts on this issue.
Thank you for taking these steps to promote a more balanced participation here on foundation-l.
-- John Vandenberg
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hi,
I think its a good idea and maybe it will bring some new people active on this list. Since we have a lot of people reading and only a little group posting.
See ya,
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As anemic as these rules are, I hope they send a message to our problematic posters and impinge on their ability to ruin the mailing list if they don't get it by now.
However, I have to say that I rather loved full moderation and was hoping someone would simply "forget" to turn it off. Let's aim for a signal-to-noise ratio in the same ballpark as we had while moderation was on, OK? GO TEAM!
- -Mike
2009/11/14 Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.com:
After reviewing the comments of foundation-l participants over the last few days, we've come up with a few changes that we hope will ultimately improve the tenor and scope of discussions.
*wild applause*
(29 posts to go ...)
- d.
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 3:20 AM, Ryan Lomonaco wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
Second, we're adding a "soft post limit" that, for the time being, will kick in at 30 posts per month. At that point, we will, at our discretion, place members on moderation for the remainder of the month, and will approve posts only where we feel they are useful and add significantly to the discussion.
Good idea. Is the number of posts from any one contributor easy to keep track of?
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
Good idea. Is the number of posts from any one contributor easy to keep track of?
Erik Zachte has some stats here that seem to update fairly regularly:
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html
You can also see all messages, sorted by user, here:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-November/author.html
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 12:50:40AM -0500, Ryan Lomonaco wrote:
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
Good idea. Is the number of posts from any one contributor easy to keep track of?
Erik Zachte has some stats here that seem to update fairly regularly:
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html
Wow, they're very comprehensive and interesting!
You can also see all messages, sorted by user, here:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-November/author.html
I never knew that was there, quite useful for looking up specific messages in a specific month on a specific list without trawling through the main archives or your inbox.
Thanks!
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org