Handling Politics the plug-discuss way?

Mon Aug 3 10:02:02 MST 2009

with a forum, the admin could just move the topic to the correct list. :-)

  _____  

From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of mike
havens
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 9:04 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Handling Politics the plug-discuss way?

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.
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>

--
http://linuxgazette.net/165/kachold.html
(623)239-3392
(503)754-4452 www.obnosis.com

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss

-- 
:-)~MIKE~(-:

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20090803/b85ee467/attachment.htm 