Re: [ga] Proposal for mailing list policy

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>]

I'm using this message to reply to a multitude of other messages; I'll try 
to be brief. Alex Kamantauskas' message framed a few of the issues nicely, 
so this is shaped like a reply to him. I'll try to be brief.

At 09:40 14.01.00 -0500, Alex Kamantauskas wrote:

>  So far I've been reading a one-sided conversation between Harald and
>  Baptista ..... but I question why the
>  conversation is taking place at all?  Are you not participating in the
>  disruption?

In the discussion about whether to impose rules that may lead to Baptista 
being excluded from posting for certain periods of time, I find responding 
to Baptista relevant. Apologies for the disruption; I hope it's soon over.

>  Why can't there be two (or more) lists?  The uncensored list, which would
>  be the "official" record, and a "filtered" list (or more than one), where
>  everyone who uses that list agrees to the filter rules *by the very act
>  of subscribing to the list*.

We could. But I don't belive it would be right, because it would require 
those of us who feel obliged to participate to follow the unfiltered list. 
If they take the responsibility of "official" action, they have the duty of 
following the "official" discussion (IMHO).
And I don't want to force anyone to listen to everything that's posted to 
the list, no matter what its quality is; that's too harsh a punishment for 
volunteering to do work for the community.

Note also that the rules that I suggested do *not* envision banning a 
person permanently from the list, and do *not* envision using the 
expression of an idea as a reason for suspending people's right to post.

Numerous people have expressed support for the idea of "two lists".
I believe they are right - the questions really boil down to:
- Which one of these is called "ga"?
- Which one of these is "official"?

A new version of the suggestion will be forthcoming this weekend.
The changes a majority seem to agree on are:

- The "unfiltered" list will be archived.
- The matter of publishing the "unfiltered" archives needs further 
investigation; the only argument so far against such publication is 
liability issues.

The other issues raised:
- Requirement for positive identification of people on the list
- Allowing people to post using a "handle" (an identifier that is not
   connected to their name)
- Allowing access to the email addresses of subscribers ("who")
- The question of who decides to impose a suspension of posting rights
do not seem to be addressed by enough people in the debate to warrant 
changing the current proposal.

Joop Ternstra has volunteered the use of his facilities for conducting an 
opinion poll of the participants in the list once the revised version is 
released; I guess he'll tell people about the mechanics of doing so in due 
course.

I hope we'll get this done soon!

                        Harald


--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no