I have seen solutions offered for preventing the posting of flame-
inducing postings to this list, but found them mostly severely over
the top.
If this were not a mailing list but a village, I am sure we would
have simple solutions for dealing with the village idiot. None of
those would entail building a second village, or having a curfew or
whatever.
The simplest solution would be to temporarily moderate the
troublemakers. That way you do not drive away the people that have
just as much right to be here as the troublemakers, and you do not
discipline the troublemakers in excess. Banning the troublemakers on
the other hand would only be an option if they even cause the police
too much work.
As an aside, I wish people would excercise a little more constraint
when stumbling across Bowerbird's ramblings. The Bird cannot help
being an idiot. You can.
I started filtering out the flunkeys, and currently have the
following addresses in my blocklist: Shimmin, Jon Noring, JWaddell,
Gutenberg9443, Joshua, CannonA, Brandon, and Doug Schroeder. These
are all people who felt it necessary to engage with the Bird and make
this list a worse place to be, when instead they could have shown
constraint.
The reason I am for policing still is because new list members of
course don't know the trolls yet, and so may unwittingly engage in
unnecessary flame wars. By moderating the trolls, you make it easier
for the others to behave.
Just my 2 cents, of course.
--
branko collin
collin(a)xs4all.nl
