[Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Austin Hair]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Brian<Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
> Austin, your page says nothing about the kinds of conversations you would
> like to see on foundation-l.

You're right, it doesn't.  I don't see it as my place to dictate, and
I'm looking for most of the input to come from others.

I do, however, hope we can all agree on a bare minimum of "a civil
forum for anyone interested to discuss Wikimedia Foundation issues."
As a practical matter, improving the signal:blah ratio makes the forum
more accessible—to community members, to trustees, to WMF Inc. staff
(who, often new to the community, may feel intimidated jumping in).

> To me, this is the thing that has gone most wrong about this list. The
> Foundation just isn't here. They may be subscribed, and they may read, but
> they do not participate. They do not lead by example (with a few notable
> exceptions) by raising the level of discourse, and most all of Foundation
> business is conducted either in person, or in private e-mails. We feel like
> we have to shout in order to get their attention, and that not only do we
> not know what they are up to, but we have no say in it.

That's what I'm hoping we'll improve.

> I have seen it said several times that this list has too much traffic. I
> think that's an overgeneralization - it has too much negative traffic. This
> list can handle as much productive traffic as the foundation cares to seed
> it with. Rather than having that conversation over private e-mail, consider
> whether it could benefit from the voices of a few community members. If
> nobody replies that's fine because by sending it the foundation has both
> increased the level of transparency in its thinking and operations and also
> let the community know that it takes what they say seriously.

I agree, but also assert that this isn't going to happen as long as
95% of the traffic comes from 1% of subscribers and an extremely high
percentage of the overall volume is spent disputing minor points of
semantics and prose.  Volume is a problem, and it may not be one we
can solve, but maybe we can put more effort into the art of pith?

Austin