Handling Politics the plug-discuss way?

[mike havens]

no one will post to it and it won't stop in the general list..... if I
remember right none of the other lists get any traffic; just this one, the
one for general discussion.

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com>wrote:

> PLEASE Add a Political LIST for PLUG members interested in such
> discussions.
>
> On 8/3/09, Bob Elzer <bob.elzer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've just been deleting the topic on sight. But that is more work than
> > should be necessary.
> >
> > This is one reason I thought it would be better to go to a forum.
> >
> > With a forum, if the thread goes off course, it can split and moved to
> the
> > correct Subject.
> >
> > The thread could also be locked if it gets out of hand.
> >
> > But best of all when I go to the forum, I see what's new, and I can
> ignore
> > all the threads I don't have
> > an interest in, and when I'm done mark them all read.
> >
> > Using a forum cuts down on all the unwanted email being sent to everyone.
> >
> > You can still have mail sent to you for topics that you post in.
> >
> > Not sure how everyone else feels, but I would prefer if this was a forum.
> >
> > Then we can get teamspeak going to replace IRC :P   :-)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> >> [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On
> >> Behalf Of Ryan Rix
> >> Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 10:21 PM
> >> To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> >> Subject: OT: Handling Politics the plug-discuss way?
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >> http://hackersramblings.wordpress.com |
> >> http://twitter.com/phrkonaleash
> >> XMPP: phrkonaleash at gmail.com          | MSN: phrkonaleash at yahoo.com
> >> AIM:  phrkonaleash                    | Yahoo: phrkonaleash
> >> IRC:  PhrkOnLsh at irc.freenode.net/#srcedit,#teensonlinux,#plugaz and
> >>       countless other FOSS channels.
> >>
> >>
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>
> --
> http://linuxgazette.net/165/kachold.html
> (623)239-3392
> (503)754-4452 www.obnosis.com
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-- 
:-)~MIKE~(-:
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