[clug] An alternate place for longer, meandering threads?

[Daniel Pittman]

steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> writes:

> We may have lost Ben, James and Conrad from the list...  But their departure
> raises an issue.

*nod*  ...and their loss is disappointing.

[...]

> Those other communities handled these noisy threads in two ways:
>
>  - either setup beforehand a set of lists for diff purposes and wrote clear
>    posting guidelines (with moderators enforcing).
>
>  - or created an 'off-list' list in the course of time.  People would get
>    encouraged to take discussions 'off-list'.  Democracy in action :-)

*nod*  Both of these can work, although my experience running communities
suggests that unless you have active moderation, *and* a moderation team that
is exceptionally hardy, robust, and unbiased, formal enforcement is an
unpopular thing overall.[1]

The "socially moderated" option is often better, in my experience, and can
also provide an outlet for other discussions, such as non-FOSS issues that
relate to topics formerly at hand.

> One answer is saying:
>  "we're all responsible adults, either use a killfile or learn to manage
> threads". [more brutally, "life's tough, deal with it"]
>
> I don't like that approach.

That doesn't work.  (Actually, that is one of the common responses to sexism
in general, and it fails as badly here as it does when women are told that. ;)


> The "prevention is better than cure" rule says its better to have a high
> Signal-to-Noise ratio on the primary list than to make everyone waste time
> managing 'noise' in their own way.  Which for some people is to
> unsubscribe... And the community loses.

Yes.

> [Why would you do that publicly?  Sorry, I don't understand that.]

Normally that is To make a statement about your beliefs, and to try and rescue
a community that you liked, but now feel has lost direction or changed into
something you no longer want to be part of.  Altruism, basically.

I vastly prefer it to the other, similar, form, "if you don't X then I am
going to unsubscribe", for various values of X.

> So, where do others stand on this?
>
> Could we have a CLUG-other list dedicated to continuing long (& especially)
> heated discussions???

I strongly suggest that you define the lists in terms of content, not "heat"
or "long", or other ... flexible terms.  After all, what I consider
comfortable and rational debate is another persons screaming fury.

However, the split of "core" and "off-topic" list works well for the Victorian
LUG, which has quite a lot of, well, technical flame-wars, basically.  The
same sort of heat, probably less light, but helped by having the outlet.

Oh, and the off-topic list generally gets a reasonable amount of traffic
because people /do/ want to discuss stuff that isn't the core remit of the
LUG, but to discuss it with the people they know through the LUG.

> All those for?  All those against?  Better suggestions??
> I think the (whatever the list owners/moderators say) have it :-)

...and, yeah, this is the end point of the whole thing.  Whoever runs the
list, y'know, sets the policy. :)

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  Typically, it works fine until either someone who /is/ moderated gets
     unhappy and raises (justified or otherwise) issues of bias, or until the
     moderation panel turn out to have some set of biases.  Both are real
     risks, and I know I have been guilty of having unexamined biases plenty
     of times. :)

-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel at rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
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