I had another thought hours after I sent my reply to Albert. What if we create a list for KDE listowners to which all listowners and mods are subscribed? That way we can approach issues as a team, share resources and problems, ask one another for coverage during planned absences, etc.
We had a list like this at Rootsweb, a free genealogy community, and it generally worked well. RW also used Mailman software before closing the lists recently. I've moved most of my former lists to Groups.io which is a splendid platform. I very much wish it was Free software! It seems like a lits would be a more stable way to approach the issue than an annual inquiry email. Thoughts? Valorie On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 1:38 AM Ben Cooksley <bcooks...@kde.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 4:55 PM Valorie Zimmerman > <valorie.zimmer...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 3:31 PM Albert Astals Cid <aa...@kde.org> wrote: > >> > >> Dear Community, > >> > >> One important part of mailing lists being healthy is > owners/moderators[1]. > >> > >> They moderate the lists, they help users that want to > subscribe/unsubscribe but don't know how to, they enact emergency > moderation in the very very seldom case that it is needed, etc. > >> > >> So to keep our mailing lists healthy we need to be sure to have healthy > list owners. > >> > >> In plural, more than one, because from time to time, we go on vacation > and the list duties still need taking care of. > >> > >> For that I'd like to enact this policy: > >> > >> Mailing lists should have at least 2 active owners, ideally 3 > [Obviously exceptions apply, like if we just started a mailing list to > coordinate translators for a language that has no translation in KDE yet, > we'd probably have no way to get 2 list owners] > >> > >> One keyword in that sentence is "active". > >> > >> Mailing list ownership/moderation un-activity is hard to detect. > >> > >> One way to potentially detect it, is by those summaries that sysadmin > sends periodically for lists with lots of mails to moderate, but that > doesn't cover all the cases. > >> > >> For example, it's possible that a mailing list has 2 owners and only > one of them is inactive, since the other one is keeping the list in working > condition we don't see it as a problem, but if that person goes on holiday, > then it suddenly is. > >> > >> For that I'd like to enact this policy sub-point: > >> > >> Mailing list owners will be contacted every year asking if they are > still active and if they want to continue being list owner or if they'd > prefer we find a substitute. > >> > >> If they say "please find a substitute" or fail to answer in a given > time frame (I'd say a month is fair), they will be removed as owners and in > case the "at least 2 active owners, ideally 3" policy is broken we'll find > a new person. > >> > >> Does that sound something like we could agree on? > > > > > > I think this is a good idea. > > > >> Then the big question is "who will do this work?" Because it seems > quite a bit of work (albeit only once a year). I would suggest the > Community Working Group does this, as it's a way to keep our community > healthy, but i understand it's quite some work, so i volunteer to do it if > the CWG doesn't feel this is a task they want to take on. > > > > > > As a member of CWG, I think that this is a suitable task for us, and I'm > willing to do it. However, surely there is a master list of all the lists > and who the stated owners and mods are. If so, can't the sending be done > somewhat automatically? With the answers going to the CWG or whoever, to > find replacement people. > > > > You'd need a way of catching the exceptions - the people who don't reply > though. > Not sure how easy that would be to automate, but it's probably possible. > > In terms of getting a list of all lists, we can provide one of those > (it's attached). I'm not sure if Mailman provides anything out of the > box that lists who the owners of a list are though. > > >> Things I'm missing? > > > > > > Healthy lists are somewhat active. While a major protective duty of > owners and mods is to keep spam out and keep conversations moving in a > positive way, another is to keep the list active by bringing to it > appropriate topics of discussion. I don't want that forgotten. Too often > issues are discussed in IRC and never brought to the list where they ought > to be. > > > >> Improvement suggestions? > >> > >> Cheers, > >> Albert > >> > >> [1] yes, i know they are not the same, but since one is a subset of the > other, let's pretend they are. > > > > > > I would like to hear from Sysadmin how many lists we have and how many > owners and if there is a way to automatically send an email to all owners > along with the names of the lists they administer. > > > > Valorie > > Cheers, > Ben > > > > > -- > > http://about.me/valoriez - pronouns: she/her > > > > > -- http://about.me/valoriez - pronouns: she/her