Re: [ga] "Moderating" the GA list.

["J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>]

Dear Thomas,
The question is what are you about? it looks like you are about statistics 
and nicely draft reports. Like the Chief in the Titanic kitchen wipping the 
tables before leaving. If you want to get the GA operational make it vote. 
On anything. Progessively it will become fed-up with non serious issues and 
you will get something achieved. How do you want people to get interested 
in writting letters they cannot sign and post? jfc


On 14:51 23/06/02, Thomas Roessler said:

>Any "moderation" of the GA list will have to meet some basic requirements, 
>besides improving readability and reducing noise.
>
>In particular, every posting sent to a General Assembly mailing list MUST 
>be available to the public.  That's what we currently achieve by having 
>ga-full on the one hand and the monitored GA list on the other.  The 
>effect of this kind of transparency is this: While undue censorship 
>becomes provable, unproven assertions of such censorship become moot.
>
>Also, it MUST be possible for members of the GA to get quick access to 
>postings.  This may be considered solved by having a ga-full list on the 
>one hand, and a moderated main GA list on the other - but I believe that 
>we can do better.
>
>A possible improved approach would be to make a traditionally
>moderated version of the list available IN ADDITION to what we have, and 
>look if people would actually accept it.  One of the problems
>with this approach is that it adds considerably to the complexity of the 
>whole GA thing - possibly beyond the point where it's still
>reasonable.  Also, it would duplicate some of the list monitoring
>efforts we already have.
>
>The interesting question is, of course, what the list coming out of
>this would look like.  I've made an experiment and taken the GA
>traffic from weeks 22 and 23 of this year (the first two weeks of
>June).  I have then deleted the things I'd probably have rejected as far 
>as a moderated list is concerned (and, of course, all the things I'd have 
>just ignored for a summary).  The result is available in
>web archive form at
><http://does-not-exist.org/ga/filtered/0206/maillist.html>.
>
>
>When I did this, I noticed that there were some list members whose
>postings (and even threads they started) I collectively deleted.
>With some other list members, I frequently deleted postings because
>they were off-topic or idle chatting. Finally, there were many
>members of the list whose postings I collectively approved.
>
>Thus, a very similar result could have been obtained by making the
>list unmoderated by default, but turning on moderation for a couple
>of individuals.
>
>
>If you want to put it like this, this would mean that list
>monitoring would intervene much more quickly, and, for instance,
>"block" people for mere off-topic posting.  This "blocking" would,
>however, be soft (as opposed to what we currently do): It wouldn't
>imply that messages don't go to the list at all, it would only mean
>that the individuals in question would be subject to some kind
>"adult supervision" - after having proven that they can't do
>without.
>
>
>Actually, I'd like to give this approach a try immediately after
>Bucharest - it's not clear to me that it will actually work as
>intended, in particular given the fact that the approach will
>probably require frequent changes to list filter definitions, and
>will have to withstand the usual attempts to game the system by
>some.
>
>Comments?
>
>--
>Thomas Roessler                          http://log.does-not-exist.org/
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