Andrew Whitworth wrote:
I have to say that I agree with Birgitte here. For me, Foundation-l has becoming incresasingly useless as a mailing list because it is so frequently dominated by people who seem to be very "bitter and mean-spirited" to the point that they are on the attack no matter what happens.
So ignore them, block them, ban them, etc. If there are people whose mean-spiritedness is preventing us from conducting legitimate business here, or is preventing this list from being a useful resource, those people should be removed from it. It is not anybody's duty or responsibility to "put up" with people who are unhelpful, unproductive, and even counter-productive. This list has a purpose and "empowering trolls" or "dealing with trolls" is not that purpose.
I am unsure what we should do about foundation-l. It has become a sewer. It is difficult to balance our very strong desire for an unmoderated forum where people can feel comfortable making strong criticisms (nothing wrong with that!) with a forum where trolls are exhausting a lot of good people and spreading misinformation due to the inability of others to keep up with the sheer volume of malice.
I don't see why this list has to be "unmoderated". None of the wikis are unmoderated, and some of them are very strictly moderated. Set rules: legitimate users will follow them, trolls will not. This is not to say that the rules need to be complicated, or strict, etc. The rules may not even need to be explicit, set some moderators who have good judgement and tell them that they will "know it when they see it". Hell, it works for pornography in the US, it will work for trolls on the mailinglist.
I would also submit a small disagreement that this list has become a "sewer", but it's effectiveness has certainly been limited unnecessarily.
--Andrew Whitworth
I fully agree with you Andrew. Several years ago, I was not really supportive of putting people in moderation, but in the past few months, I became a little bit bolder in that regard. When I feel that some posters are really going too far, I put them in moderation. For example, I did that in the past with Anthony, and more recently with Geni. I think it was rather helpful.
Ant
On Dec 21, 2007 1:18 PM, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.org wrote:
I fully agree with you Andrew. Several years ago, I was not really supportive of putting people in moderation, but in the past few months, I became a little bit bolder in that regard. When I feel that some posters are really going too far, I put them in moderation. For example, I did that in the past with Anthony, and more recently with Geni. I think it was rather helpful.
Yes, I've been moderated in the past, and in my experience about 90-95% of my messages eventually go through the moderation. So more than anything else I think the way moderation is handled on these mailing lists is pointless.
A simple message from a moderator telling someone (or everyone) to stop posting to a particular thread, and/or a particular topic, and/or telling someone flat out to take a few days break, would, in my opinion, be just as effective if not more effective.
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