> I'm *really worried* about proposals that involve mailing lists that
> have only private archives and require moderator approval for
> subscription. It just doesn't feel right for an open source project.
I understand the feeling. I'm trying to balance the obvious desire for a
completely public process with the absolutely known fact that publishing a
rule in the user's group will literally within hours lead to the rule
becoming useless in many cases.
(I've even a couple of times as a test given the bodies for slightly bogus
rules out - that detected a not particularly useful spam sign - to see if
the spam sign disappeared, and how quickly. Indeed, the signs would usually
disappear. One could probably conclude something about the spam gang using
a particular sign from how quickly after publication of a rule the sign
disappears; but I'm not particularly interested in that form of research.)
This led to my twofold suggestion that a) entry to the group be moderated,
and b) the archives be embargoed for a week or two, or perhaps a month.
While these seem strange for an open source project stated as they are, they
really aren't that odd for many projects. For instance, on many projects to
be a developer you have to be admitted to developer access to the source.
Others can look at the source and make their own versions, but can't
necessarily modify the actual project source unless the local gods approve
of them. (See for instance the description of the Audacity project over at
SF, which I was looking at earlier today.)
As for temporarily embargoed mailing list postings, this really isn't a
whole lot diffferent than IRC channels that only the elected devs know
about.. ;-)
Loren
