OT: Handling Politics the plug-discuss way?

[Joshua Zeidner]

 I think youre making mountains out of molehills here... one of these
heated political discussions happens on average once a month (if
that).  I think it adds to the variety and diversity on this list.  It
would appear that these discussions compel new participants, which is
a good thing for the list.  The level of articulation for some of
these discussions is very high- its not just some crude flame war.  I
don't think the noise is so much a problem as the ideas presented or
perhaps vendettas against participants.  I mean god, a few extra
emails in your inbox and the world is coming to an end?  get over it.

  Looking over some of my thoughts ... sorry if I come off as
complaining about AZ.  Im just pointing out some of my observations.
On the whole, I like it here- and my commitments to this state have
recently gone up a bit.  This is the month however when I hear
everyone say they hate it here... give it another month or two and its
back to happy happy arizonans... that is once we get this financial
crisis sorted out.

  have a good week,

   -jmz

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Ryan Rix<phrkonaleash at gmail.com> wrote:
> Group,
>
> Are these political discussions (examples: the second half of Re: Guess
> What, when I relabelled unsuccesfully, and whatever happened to the
> Geeky/entrepreneurial thread) detracting from the point of this list (which
> is to discuss GNU/Linux and Free Software, and not necessarily to discuss
> the economy, the government, or conspiracies about whether or not our duly
> elected President was an American or not) and in general daunting for people
> who may be new listers/Linuxers?
>
> Hans agrees with me (via a quick discussion in the IRC channel) that these
> discussions in general detract from the list, and make the non-political-
> flame-war discussions less active/less... what is the word... visible, so I
> think that something should be done, or at least a discussion should take
> place about it.
>
> I see a few options:
> 1) We leave it here and do nothing. Most email clients have the ability to
> filter on subject/topic of a discussion, so those who didn't want to
> see/deal with/get drug into these discussions could easily filter them out.
> We could create a new topic heading, like we have for OT: (politics: or
> something, when someone posts something politically kinda sorta related),
> allowing those who want to take part in these discussions to do so, while
> the others are safely shielded from them. The problem with this is that new
> users will still see these discusions taking place, which could, imo be very
> detrimental to their joining this community/getting the help with a question
> they may need/just feeling comfortable. But of course, this is easy enough
> to do and leaves the work for the users who don't like said discussions to
> take care of.
>
> 2) Create another list for these mails. The problem with this idea is that
> (imo) mailman has no easy way to control WHERE messages between two
> different lists go, so I think that it could be hard to transition between
> the two lists when a discussion does eventually go OT-Political. This would
> rely mostly on the good will and rememberance of the posters, which in the
> experience of the last few OT-Political threads has given me the impression
> that this will NOT work.
>
> 3) We moderate OT threads. My personal opinion is that the best way to keep
> flame wars down is to moderate. Not so much eliminate the posts that may
> incite these political discussions but to put a long enough delay on the
> posts that it hampers the quick reply-reply-reply-reply that usually is what
> completely derails thoughtful discussion. If users are given the instant
> chance to write a quick retort to a discussion and have that instantly
> posted to a hundred people who may or may not have the same idealogy
> basically causes a thread to go haywire in a matter of hours. With a
> sufficient delay in these posts being sent to the group, this haywiring can
> be pushed out to a day or two, hopefully alleviating any flame wars which
> may develop. Most of the wars that take place on p-d are about a day or two
> long at most anyways.
>
> 4) We forbid it. I think that this is the WORST option, but an option
> nonetheless. I am not in favor of censorship at all, but if things get bad
> enough we could do this. It would probably have to fall back to #3.
>
> My personal preference is #3, but that gives someone an extra job, and I
> don't think Hans should have to do it himself. A board of moderators be
> elected perhaps? Is there any way to crowdsource it? If this was a forum
> rather than a mailing list (which I don't support at all!) we could add a
> score/rating system, but I don't think that this is possible via e-mail.
>
> Thanks and best,
> Ryan Rix
>
> --
> ---
> Ryan Rix
> (623)-826-0051
>
> * LG loves czech girls.
> <vincent> LG: do they have additional interesting "features" other girls
> don't have? ;)
>        -- #Debian
>
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