[Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Tim Starling]

David Gerard wrote:
> wine-users - http://forum.winehq.org/
> 
> It started as a mailing list, then the forum was set up with a two-way
> gateway. The forum is where most of the posters actually post from,
> but so far it works ... surprisingly well!

If you allow posting via email, then you lose the ability to properly
authenticate those posts. If you allow receiving of the full content
via email, then you lose the ability to postmoderate. Maybe it would
be useful as a temporary migration measure, but it wouldn't solve any
abuse problem until you removed those features.

> The main thing Wine found is that the forum promptly had 10x the traffic!

There's a chance we would see that aspect of it. The mailing lists
have a different readership to the on-wiki discussion pages, and
that's because of the technical barrier, which works in both
directions. Some people prefer the interoperable nature of mail and
don't bother reading the wikis, and some people like web pages and
find the mailing lists strange, and the subscription process onerous.

Because I know that this mailing list is mainly populated with the
former kind of person, I know that my desire for a web-only interface
is wishful thinking.

A properly advertised bidirectional gateway might go some distance
towards healing the split in the community that we currently have. But
then we would run the risk of losing the people who contribute via
mail, on small screens or non-threading clients, who already complain
that foundation-l traffic is getting too high. A lower barrier to
entry, with a continuing lack of postmoderation, would only make the
traffic higher.

I'm not opposed to bidirectional gateways, but I do think we should
move carefully. If the software is not up to scratch, we could lose
what productive public discussion we have, and increase our reliance
on private mailing lists.

-- Tim Starling