I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules: 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the thread. 2) Responses in a thread must be in response to the original message. No responding to responses. 4) A person may initiate a maximum of two threads per week. Exception for foundation staff, board members, list administrator(s), and with permission of the list administrator(s). Responses per week are unlimited subject to rules 1 and 2. 5) Posts generally do not go through a moderation queue. Anyone breaking the rules will be put on moderation or unsubscribed at the discretion of the list administrator(s).
I would say no to this,
A second list with more rules will mean more reading work, double posting cross posting...
Rules can be good, but we need moderators and list admins to make sure the rules are not broken, those people need to put time in this.. and all that time we could beter place in working on Free media.
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules:
- One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the
thread.
That's not how announcement lists work. The whole point of an announcement list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of authority are allowed to post. mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce are good examples.
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Benjamin Leesemufarmers@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules:
- One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the
thread.
That's not how announcement lists work. The whole point of an announcement list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of authority are allowed to post. mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce are good examples.
I'm pretty confident that Anthony knows how traditional announcement lists work. But what is the meaning of an announcement list for a non-hierarchical highly decentralized project? For smaller projects you just give all the active project members the rights to post to the list — and trust that they understand that they are supposed to keep the volume down and that all the project members agree about what is announcement worthy.
I think what Anthony suggests is an interesting and worthwhile idea. The Wikimedia communit(y|(ies)) have a lot of communications challenges: People are often unaware of interesting things that others are doing. The editorial channels like EnWP's signpost are fairly narrow pipe. And the open communication lists suffer from high traffic even when their signal to noise ratio is decent.
I don't agree with the notion that "we need moderators and list admins to make sure the rules are not broken", obviously the list would need someone who can enforce the rules but there is little reason to believe that there would be much enforcement work after all: the wikis do okay without heavy handed control.
Right now there is a lot of announcement duplication because there is no clearly right place to send announcements with foundation wide impact, so we send them everywhere.
Were I king of the universe I'd probably pick somewhat different criteria than Anthony suggested (i.e. I might suggest something crazy like initial posts must be translated into at least two languages… to shift the communication cost onto the sender; or require that any posting be on behalf of at least two people), but I don't know that the specifics matter or that my suggestions would really be any better than his.
If someone wants to try out something along the lines of what Anthony is suggesting I'd be willing to volunteer for list-mod duty, with the understanding that the moderators purpose is primary enforcing the rules for traffic control purposes.
On Aug 29, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Anthony wrote:
I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the following posting rules:
- One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the
thread. 2) Responses in a thread must be in response to the original message. No responding to responses. 4) A person may initiate a maximum of two threads per week. Exception for foundation staff, board members, list administrator(s), and with permission of the list administrator(s). Responses per week are unlimited subject to rules 1 and 2. 5) Posts generally do not go through a moderation queue. Anyone breaking the rules will be put on moderation or unsubscribed at the discretion of the list administrator(s).
I'm rather fond of this idea. Anthony, I hope you don't mind, but I added it to the Call for Proposals on the strategy wiki and credited you.
Sometimes, fighting through the high traffic lists to find announcements is a huge problem...
Philippe
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Philippe Beaudette < pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Sometimes, fighting through the high traffic lists to find announcements is a huge problem...
Philippe
Quite the contrary, it is an even larger problem to be subscribed to an increasingly large number of ever fragmenting lists. Additionally, a read-only announce list would serve to stifle community discussion of WMF announcements. If the Foundation wants to have an announce list and then cross post all announcements to announce-l and foundation-l it wouldn't be so problematic but I doubt such a list would have a large number of subscribers.
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Philippe Beaudette < pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Sometimes, fighting through the high traffic lists to find announcements is a huge problem...
Philippe
Quite the contrary, it is an even larger problem to be subscribed to an increasingly large number of ever fragmenting lists. Additionally, a read-only announce list would serve to stifle community discussion of WMF announcements. If the Foundation wants to have an announce list and then cross post all announcements to announce-l and foundation-l it wouldn't be so problematic but I doubt such a list would have a large number of subscribers.
The simple solution there would be to subscribe foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org to the announce-l list.
I think it would be beneficial. Some people really would like to see only the important stuff and not the discussion in between. And definitely not meta-threads relating to how the list works (like this one).
2009/8/30 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Quite the contrary, it is an even larger problem to be subscribed to an increasingly large number of ever fragmenting lists. Additionally, a read-only announce list would serve to stifle community discussion of WMF announcements. If the Foundation wants to have an announce list and then cross post all announcements to announce-l and foundation-l it wouldn't be so problematic but I doubt such a list would have a large number of subscribers.
I agree - if there is an announcement list it is an absolute must that all announcements be cross-posted to foundation-l (or another appropriate discussion list).
On Aug 30, 2009, at 4:16 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I agree - if there is an announcement list it is an absolute must that all announcements be cross-posted to foundation-l (or another appropriate discussion list).
I actually agree with that too. Announcements don't happen in a vacuum... but I like the idea of having them all in one, easy to navigate, archive.
Philippe
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org