On Wednesday 23 August 2006 20:24, Steve Lamb wrote: > Angelina Carlton wrote: > > Again, Marcelo, please do not feel the need to apologize, you are > > only echoing the same thing many of us feel: we want to to keep > > this list focused one Debian, simple as that. > > Then here's a pop quiz. Why is it in the years that this list > has existed there pretty much hasn't been a consistent pattern where > a moderator of the list has commented on the off-topic threads? > Sure, every once in a blue moon a moderator, with moderator hat off, > will comment on it. Of course those instances are also matched by > moderators, with moderator hat off, instructing people on how to > filter or simply delete messages unread.
I never even knew there were moderators until one showed up a few months ago (or sometime within the past 6 months or so) and started censoring posts that were critical of moderators. Other than that one incident, I thought this was a case of that which governs the least governs the best. > But by and large the threads come, the threads go, the mods are > hands off. Oddly enough in the past, ohhh, decade or so of people > claiming any particular thread would be the demise of the list you > know what has happened? The list has grown. People continue to get > help. And the signal-to-noise ratio has never gotten out of whack. One thing I've noticed in tech forums or lists is that there are always a lot of people that are so knowledgeable about tech stuff they think they know everything about everything and disprove it to the world when they try to be insightful of people. This list has a lot of very intelligent people on it and many of us have times when we work long stretches at the computer for days on end to meet a deadline or goal. From what I've seen, OT threads are generally a pressure release valve that are harmless overall and the only people that ever have a noteable problem with them are those that are so heavy on the tech side and light in understanding the people side that they don't realize it's not just the people, but the group as a whole, that often needs a release. There's also the case of the Libranet help list that had a number of quite knowledgeable people on it, but when Libranet started censoring them (I won't go into the entire story, I'll just say they weren't paying people to provide tech support, but many volunteers were helping for free and suddenly felt like they were being censored), the people who were providing most of the help on the list disappeared. I don't think the list ever recovered in terms of the level of help provided before Libranet was pronounced to be shutting down. Start censoring and you'll tick off many of the brightest people here and have to start looking elsewhere for help. The OT can also help for those still getting used to Linux or Debian to see that they're dealing with real people, not geeks in tights and capes who can fly and do super-geek things. Hal
