On Thursday, May 03, 2012 10:49:22, Gergely Nagy wrote: > Stefano Zacchiroli <z...@debian.org> writes: > > 2) "don't feed the troll" + report abuses to listmasters and act > > > > accordingly > > Of the three, this is the least disruptive, in my opinion. Of course, > all the problems you mention (social awkwardity, effort from the > community and extra burden on listmasters) apply, BUT! > > Perhaps a compromise could be to close threads forcibly, and temporarily > ban everyone from posting to the list, if they attempt to post to a > closed thread after its closing has been announced (a little window > of error should be given, of course, half an hour tops, or thereabouts).
I've been helping moderate a LUG mailing list for a couple of years that uses this strategy, and I think it works. The message of "this thread is closed, anyone posting will be temporarily banned from posting if they reply" comes as a relief when the thread has gone on long enough to have touched on seemingly all the possibilities for solving an issue, but feels slightly heavy-handed and "muzzle-ing" if done too quickly. Feedback on the list typically helps the list moderators attain a reasonable equilibrium for the cuttoff point. There are a couple of downsides to this strategy: - one or more moderators need to be monitoring posts, and thus it's work. The volume that this particular mailing list gets I think it's not a one person task. [Come to think of it, how many DDs are currently allowed to officially moderate the list?] - There's a tendency to forget that the 'mod bit' is set for the user that's been temporarily banned from posting > This reduces the social awkwardness, as we'd be reporting bad threads > instead of bad people, and threads don't mind. It would reduce the load > on listmasters, as threads are fewer than people, and there's less > emotion involved, and justification is easier. > > And if so need be, the temporary bans can gradually increase in length > if one keeps on posting to closed threads. Yes, this works. Thankfully it very rarely ever comes to this, but I've seen a couple of instances where this became necessary. > I've seen things like this work reasonably well on web-based forums, and > while it is considerably harder to implement it on a mailing list (and > probably impossible to make it entirely correct at that), something > reasonably similar that works in most cases shouldn't be terribly hard > to implement. People abusing the shortcomings of the solution can still > be banned on a case-by-case basis. It's always a judgement call. Not all judgements are going to be correct. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle chris.kna...@coredump.us GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74
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