[Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l

Sun Feb 13 20:33:19 UTC 2011

Dear Achal,

The below email seems to be trying to address too many things. I'll try to
answer some of those. I appreciate your continued interest in the Chapter
activity, considering that you were the one who started this out by putting
together the initial team.

It is probably unfair to say that the chapter hasn't communicated much on
time in just the last one month right after it has got registered legally,
when the information that flowed right from the time the EC was formed (by
you) haven't gone out appropriately and on time. This has been more or less
the case for almost two years from there. The leadership has changed in last
month. Is that why only the last month's updates are being targeted?

And the attack on EC has been either overreactions, emails  from trolls and
personal attacks. Like many observed on the list, it has been everything
else but civil.

I personally feel that some etiquette has to be maintained on this list. Be
it when you're sending the entire mail digests copied while responding back,
or when people are sending bulky attachments or bulky HTML email (and when
that gets filtered out by the spam filter and put into moderation - blame
the mods who've been looking after this list for like 6 years now!) This
also applies to those who've been writing making personal attacks on a
public mailing list.

I do not see why we should be pushing for more admins on this mailing list
when the present admins are active and have maintained this list for all
these years. However, since both of the mods who've been helping out as
community members here have now ended up in the Executive Committee, I feel
that we should probably add two more people.

Like Delphine said, moderating lists is more of "janitor work". We'd be more
happy if people (who aren't trolls) volunteer for this. I'd personally
prefer someone outside the Indian Wikimedia community or the Chapter to also
be on the moderator list among the two we add. That would probably help
where otherwise people have been just jumping into presumptions about
"moderation" when just the Indians are involved. From my own experience, the
spam filter's doings have been attributed to us many a times and distrust
has prevailed since then.

We *do not* selectively moderate emails on this open list.

It is deeply saddening when you read the kind of emails coming in during
last couple of weeks, and seeing the appalling interest of few in continuing
it rather than putting up a note pointing out to the etiquette.

- HPN

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Achal Prabhala <aprabhala at gmail.com> wrote:

> Couldn't agree more. I think that there is/ has been a lot of needless
> noise. It's not productive to cast insinuations against the chapter or
> foundation (or community for that matter) as a whole.
>
> I do think, however, that communication from the chapter regarding the
> last set of meetings (and changes then on) have not been communicated
> very well. If, for instance, some of the basic questions were to be
> addressed, I suspect that there would be much less basis for this kind
> of distracting and unhelpful noise. As far as I am concerned, I have
> fairly simple question: I still don't know why one set of the India
> chapter leadership (scroll down:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA-ChapComVer) was
> suddenly replaced by another (as detailed
> here:
> http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Announcements/Communication_from_the_Executive_Committee_regarding_first_meeting_on_January_22,_2011
> ).
> Not being on the EC, I am aware that there might well have been good
> reasons to reshuffle of the chapter leadership team; I would merely like
> to know what these reasons were. And also how you decided to change the
> structure, who stood for elections to various posts, etc. - as I would
> expect from any Wikimedia community body.
>
> Perhaps this is something that the chapter can consider in this
> instance, and in the future.
>
> As for Praveen's email, thanks for the explanations, Delphine, Anirudh,
> others.
>
> However, Anirudh, while the point about moderation/spam filters makes
> sense, mailman does generate emails (on a daily/per instance basis) to
> the admins of a list to check/approve messages caught in the filter. So
> I would imagine that for a message to stay unanswered/unresolved for
> three days indicates that the burden of administration on
> WikimediaIndia-l deserves to be shared by more than two people from the
> Wikimedia India chapter.
>
> Specifically, and to follow up on the intent expressed in previous
> messages (from Jyothis, Salman, Delphine and others), how can we help to
> immediately create a process whereby two non-chapter community members
> from India might be added as Admins to WikimediaIndia-l? Hari and
> Anirudh, I would imagine that the instant you can facilitate this
> process, there will be sufficient uptake from the community to fill
> these two slots - many thanks in advance for considering this request
> from us seriously.
>
> Good wishes,
> Achal
>
>
>
> On Sunday 13 February 2011 02:41 AM, Theo10011 wrote:
> > I have no idea what's been happening lately on the mailing list.
> >
> > Please keep it civil, this is getting rude and inappropriate for a
> > national list. It would be archived and viewed by many others, please
> > do bear that in mind.
> >
> >
> > User:Theo10011
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org
> > <mailto:lists at caseybrown.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Sudhir Ponappa
> >     <ponappasudhir at yahoo.com <mailto:ponappasudhir at yahoo.com>> wrote:
> >     > Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in
> >     translation.
> >     > I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning
> chapter
> >     > language. What is this? For eg.
> >
> >     Thank you for helping the thread by providing an example of a message
> >     that would require moderation!  Rude personal attacks such as these
> >     are the perfect examples of what should be moderated on a mailing
> >     list.
> >
> >     --
> >     Casey Brown
> >     Cbrown1023
> >
> >     _______________________________________________
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> >     Wikimediaindia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >     <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> >     https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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-- 
Hari Prasad Nadig
http://hpnadig.net | http://twitter.com/hpnadig
http://flickr.com/hpnadig
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