On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 5:23 AM nyov wrote: > I propose a global double-opt-in approach for unknown email-addresses > to debian's Mailing-Lists as a non-human moderation process.
Debian gets a lot of folks (especially on debian-www) who send us only one mail/thread, so I think double opt-in is likely to be an undue burden on those people and could put off potential future contributors contacting us for the first time. We also get a lot of folks who can't manage to unsubscribe from announce mailing lists, even when someone (like me) puts their email address into the unsubscribe form for them, so I think your proposal would be somewhere between very hard and impossible for a subset of Debian mailing list posters to navigate. Personally, I think that the completely open mailing lists and bug tracking systems with no account creation or need to prove oneself in any way is a huge advantage of Debian. When I try to contact other projects about small issues I see or questions I have and get blocked by moderation or having to register an account it is quite annoying and sometimes leads me to forget my issue or question or just leave in frustration. I think that optimising for lack of spam over openness optimises for the time of Debian insiders who have been with the project for a long time over people encountering us for the first time. As we are all getting older I would prefer that we become more inclusive over time rather than less. Our human-moderated wiki sign up process already puts people off and sometimes generates unfortunately but understandably hostile responses. It has been a huge blessing for almost completely eliminating spam though (IIRC I got fooled by a spammer once or twice) on the wiki though. While there is room for improvement on tech, wording and moderation team size, I think it is not a good idea to extend moderation to the mailing lists and BTS in particular. OTOH I would like to see an enhanced wiki-style moderation for accounts on Salsa & any future SSO platform, with the moderation staffed by a "Debian Welcome Team" who are knowledgable about welcoming new folks and knowledgable about the breadth and history of Debian in order to direct folks to the right places. https://wiki.debian.org/Welcome Even full human moderation of every new poster isn't going to be perfect, I got fooled by spammers attempting to spam the wiki once or twice and I regularly see folks responding to spam on debian-www. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
