Mailing List Archive

I would say no to this,

A second list with more rules will mean more reading work, double posting
cross posting...

Rules can be good, but we need moderators and list admins to make sure the
rules are not broken, those people need to put time in this.. and all that
time we could beter place in working on Free media.

--

Http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/user:Abigor



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On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org> wrote:

> I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the
> following posting rules:
> 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the
> thread.


That's not how announcement lists work. The whole point of an announcement
list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to
be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important
to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to
the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of
authority are allowed to post. mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce
are good examples.
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On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Benjamin Lees<emufarmers@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org> wrote:
>
>> I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the
>> following posting rules:
>> 1) One post per person per thread.  That includes the initiator of the
>> thread.
>
> That's not how announcement lists work.  The whole point of an announcement
> list is that the only posts on it will be announcements; and for the list to
> be useful, the announcements have to be limited to those that are important
> to the list's topic (which is usually narrowly defined) and of interest to
> the subscribers—which generally means that only people in positions of
> authority are allowed to post.  mediawiki-announce and toolserver-announce
> are good examples.

I'm pretty confident that Anthony knows how traditional announcement
lists work. But what is the meaning of an announcement list for a
non-hierarchical highly decentralized project? For smaller projects
you just give all the active project members the rights to post to the
list — and trust that they understand that they are supposed to keep
the volume down and that all the project members agree about what is
announcement worthy.

I think what Anthony suggests is an interesting and worthwhile idea.
The Wikimedia communit(y|(ies)) have a lot of communications
challenges: People are often unaware of interesting things that others
are doing. The editorial channels like EnWP's signpost are fairly
narrow pipe. And the open communication lists suffer from high traffic
even when their signal to noise ratio is decent.

I don't agree with the notion that "we need moderators and list admins
to make sure the
rules are not broken", obviously the list would need someone who can
enforce the rules but there is little reason to believe that there
would be much enforcement work after all: the wikis do okay without
heavy handed control.

Right now there is a lot of announcement duplication because there is
no clearly right place to send announcements with foundation wide
impact, so we send them everywhere.

Were I king of the universe I'd probably pick somewhat different
criteria than Anthony suggested (i.e. I might suggest something crazy
like initial posts must be translated into at least two languages… to
shift the communication cost onto the sender; or require that any
posting be on behalf of at least two people), but I don't know that
the specifics matter or that my suggestions would really be any better
than his.

If someone wants to try out something along the lines of what Anthony
is suggesting I'd be willing to volunteer for list-mod duty, with the
understanding that the moderators purpose is primary enforcing the
rules for traffic control purposes.

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On Aug 29, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Anthony wrote:

> I propose the foundation-announce-l mailing list be set up with the
> following posting rules:
> 1) One post per person per thread. That includes the initiator of the
> thread.
> 2) Responses in a thread must be in response to the original
> message. No
> responding to responses.
> 4) A person may initiate a maximum of two threads per week.
> Exception for
> foundation staff, board members, list administrator(s), and with
> permission
> of the list administrator(s). Responses per week are unlimited
> subject to
> rules 1 and 2.
> 5) Posts generally do not go through a moderation queue. Anyone
> breaking
> the rules will be put on moderation or unsubscribed at the
> discretion of the
> list administrator(s).

I'm rather fond of this idea. Anthony, I hope you don't mind, but I
added it to the Call for Proposals on the strategy wiki and credited
you.

Sometimes, fighting through the high traffic lists to find
announcements is a huge problem...

Philippe

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On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Philippe Beaudette <
pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
>
> Sometimes, fighting through the high traffic lists to find
> announcements is a huge problem...
>
> Philippe
>

Quite the contrary, it is an even larger problem to be subscribed to an
increasingly large number of ever fragmenting lists. Additionally, a
read-only announce list would serve to stifle community discussion of WMF
announcements. If the Foundation wants to have an announce list and then
cross post all announcements to announce-l and foundation-l it wouldn't be
so problematic but I doubt such a list would have a large number of
subscribers.
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On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Philippe Beaudette <
> pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Sometimes, fighting through the high traffic lists to find
> > announcements is a huge problem...
> >
> > Philippe
> >
>
> Quite the contrary, it is an even larger problem to be subscribed to an
> increasingly large number of ever fragmenting lists. Additionally, a
> read-only announce list would serve to stifle community discussion of WMF
> announcements. If the Foundation wants to have an announce list and then
> cross post all announcements to announce-l and foundation-l it wouldn't be
> so problematic but I doubt such a list would have a large number of
> subscribers.
>

The simple solution there would be to subscribe
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org to the announce-l list.

I think it would be beneficial. Some people really would like to see only
the important stuff and not the discussion in between. And definitely not
meta-threads relating to how the list works (like this one).

--
Ryan
User:Rjd0060
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2009/8/30 Brian <Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu>:
> Quite the contrary, it is an even larger problem to be subscribed to an
> increasingly large number of ever fragmenting lists. Additionally, a
> read-only announce list would serve to stifle community discussion of WMF
> announcements. If the Foundation wants to have an announce list and then
> cross post all announcements to announce-l and foundation-l it wouldn't be
> so problematic but I doubt such a list would have a large number of
> subscribers.

I agree - if there is an announcement list it is an absolute must that
all announcements be cross-posted to foundation-l (or another
appropriate discussion list).

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On Aug 30, 2009, at 4:16 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> I agree - if there is an announcement list it is an absolute must that
> all announcements be cross-posted to foundation-l (or another
> appropriate discussion list).


I actually agree with that too. Announcements don't happen in a
vacuum... but I like the idea of having them all in one, easy to
navigate, archive.

Philippe



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