On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 12:42:22AM -0400, Scott Lawton wrote:
Could we just ban him from the list and get on with the work? PLEASE?
The "powers that be" seem strangely reluctant.
Speaking as a P.T.B., you are correct. Targeted/selected moderation is a little too much like censorship. Complete moderation is too much work. But see my last paragraph below. We do, however, encourage individuals to manage their own email: - set up personal filters based on message headers or content - respond judiciously - be considerate of others A few people have received private notes from me (and a few others might receive such notes in the future) asking them to be more civil and patient. I am always happy to accept suggestions for people who might need such a reminder, if you do not feel comfortable sending one yourself.
In any case, if list regulars would just stop responding, that would make a huge difference.
Indeed.
Meanwhile, it's easy to filter mail from the list -- though that doesn't help folks getting the digest, which is a major drawback. (And, it's been less useful lately since so many people are joining in.)
If anyone is interested in doing some Mailman hacking (via the fine folks at GNU), or knows folks who do, I would love to have an option that allows subscribers to set personal filters on the Mailman server....this could include "never send me a message from YYY again," as well as "add !!! to ZZZ's messages, since I want to make sure I see them," or "after NNN messages in a thread, bundle them together," or certain action keywords...features that many email clients have, but mailing list server software doesn't.
If an outright ban is still out of the question, here's another idea: create a new list, perhaps gutvol-bb. Auto-subscribe bb and everyone who has responded to him more than n times in the past m months. (Naturally, any of those can unsub, and anyone else can sign up.) Then, having provided a new outlet, ban bb from this list.
We've tried something like this with gutvol-p, to shunt some of the implementation talk away from gutvol-d. I still think this is a good idea, but somehow conversations often end up back on gutvol-d. Possibly because it's a bigger soapbox, with a larger subscribership. Here's a suggestion, for anyone interested: How about a "best of" list, where only selected messages get posted? That's how this type of issue has been handled on the cypherpunks list. As some people have seen me write before, I am generally opposed to new lists (at least on the servers I manage) without a strong evident need. For a moderated list, I would very strongly recommend at least a team of two moderators -- preferably three or more. In case anyone wonders "why can't we do this for the 'posted' list, or the weekly newsletter?," the answer is: you can! But I still would prefer to have several moderators/editors. -- Greg