At the request of Paul (off-list), I have removed him from moderator status. (He is still a member though and will hopefully continue to contribute). I am now looking for someone (even multiple someones) to fill his shoes.
Tamas Marki, Andrew Clarke, John Gaughan, and John Matthews are at the top of my list of possible candidates (if they are interested). I haven't seen Nico Heinze nor Peter Nilsson posting away lately (or I haven't been paying attention) but their efforts as moderators are highly appreciated (they are still very active as the moderation logs show). Be sure to drop a note to them now and then sharing your appreciation of their efforts to keep the deluge of spam off this group (the [email protected] address goes to all moderators). Also, in light of some of Paul's (and other people's comments) comments, I'm doing a couple things to shake things up a bit and maybe fix those problems: 1) I've disabled e-mail notification delivery for myself and will start using the web interface. I was pretty much the only person who was letting homework e-mails come through to the group unmodified, which is why Paul basically wanted to stop being a moderator. I will also start complaining loudly to Yahoo every time I get annoyed with some aspect of the web interface. 2) Moderators may now reject blatantly obvious homework problems where the user is clearly not supplying enough information. I would recommend a canned response, but see my notes below. 3) Moderators can now ban members who post blatant spam. Those with job offers have a perfectly legitimate way to get their job request onto the group - through me. 4) I've altered the message people first see. Hopefully this will further reduce homework solution help where the person has not put forth effort (looks like Yahoo finally expanded the word count limit). And hopefully reduce the number of 'can i haz hlp, plzzzz' messages. 5) Moderators may also reject a message if the moderator determines the message is basically unreadable by the group. Or, if I feel particularly helpful one day, I might edit their message and let it through to the group. Whichever as long as it is reasonable. I'm always open to suggestions from group members (and moderators) on recommended changes to policy. The group policy isn't static. This is as much your group as it is mine. I'm just here to facilitate the discussion (and I happen to participate too, which helps). * Canned responses are boring because they are the same thing over and over again. I stopped using them on-list because of that reason and I'd hate to make something I personally hate a requirement or even a recommendation. I'd love to have a variety of responses _available_ for a variety of situations - enough to cover most emotional states of the person supplying the canned response - but writing good canned responses that don't sound like a robot (i.e. out of context half the time) takes a lot of time and patience. The group can really shine here by helping put together good, solid responses the moderators can pick and choose from. Witty, insightful, humorous, but not insulting/rude responses (fine line there) will keep the moderators entertained. Don't forget about the job spammers! Out of the 11,703 people subscribed to this list, there have to be some rather creative writers - you know who you are. Hope this helps! -- Thomas Hruska CubicleSoft President Ph: 517-803-4197 *NEW* MyTaskFocus 1.1 Get on task. Stay on task. http://www.CubicleSoft.com/MyTaskFocus/
