Lal wrote: >Alberto wrote: > > >Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote: > >> > >> Although I can understand it, I still think you should > >> either have totally kept it a secret or made the whole > >> thing accesible or at the very least put > >> transcripts up. As it stands now it is neither inspiring > >> faith in the new list > >> nor is it helpfull to the current crisis. > >> > >The address to join the deutero-brin-l was put here > >about a week ago. It might be somewhere in the archives. > >I'm fairly certain that I have read all of the messages over the last week >(excluding spam) and I don't recall seeing that. I did a quick search >through the archive on yahoogroups.com and the only reference to >'deutero-brin-l' was in the email quoted above. > >If such a test list exists, and other Brin-L members are freely allowed to >join, I'd love to hear about it. > >And I have to say that I agree with Sonja's comments and Erik's. >Transcripts >should be made available, unless there is something in those discussions >that the rest of us should not read?
I was under the impression that I had received such an email also. So I checked. I received it last Tuesday and assumed it was an email to the whole list to help with testing of the new future home of Brin-L. I have not had a chance to join yet, but I did look through the archives before security was up and running. I found nothing that could be called a "conspiracy." As I said, I was not even aware that the list was private in any way, and nothing I saw in the archives suggested anything different. What I saw was mostly light banter, some jokes that were also sent to the current Cornell list, and discussion about possible features to be added to the new list. I thought it was an "open alpha" or "open beta" test in which anyone could participate. I see now that I was wrong in that assumption, but even in that light, nothing that I saw on the other list (as of a few days ago) was questionable or divisive in any way. It's all pretty typical stuff for alpha testing or beta testing a listserv. You start with a few people, then add a few more, and let them start sending messages and replying to messages, and see what happens. You fix any glitches that might occur, bring on a few more folks, test some more, etc. The "possible feature" that has most folks here worried is discussion of "eviling" or whatever we decide to call it (I would rather call it "dinging"). It's a discussion I've seen on other lists; I don't remember specifically if we've talked about it here or not. One common version is that anyone can give anyone else an "evil" point (or a Ding point), but if you give one out, you also receive one tenth of a point. After a certain amount of points, you can't post to the list for a certain amount of time. Other versions include sacrificing your own ability to post to keep someone else from posting (although I think it should take 2 or 3 people sacrificing their own posting to stop someone else. That's just MHO, YMMV). At any rate, if I recall correctly from reading the archives last week, some sort of semi-formalized dinging system was being discussed as a possible option, not as a definite future feature (at least that is the impression I have, based on having read the archives a few days ago). Discussion of options or "enhancements" is always part of alpha and beta testing, and before anything is decided on this, I'm sure it will be discussed by the whole list. In fact, let's discuss this now. If someone violates a list rule, should we: 1) Talk about it on-list searching for consensus concerning what to do about it (pro: democracy in action, transparency -- con: this hasn't worked well in the recent past, there's little reason to believe it will work better in the future) 2) Have a point system with specific penalties for specific point accumulations (pro: everyone knows the penalties in advance, spelled out clearly -- con: tyrrany of the majority) 3) Have a sacrifice system where 2 or 3 or 5 people (number negotiable) could agree to have themselves banned from posting for a week in exchange for getting the person they see as the wrong-doer being banned for the same time-frame (pro: will really make people think long and hard before deciding to sacrifice -- con: tyrrany of the majority, tyrrany of the lurkers ;-) 4) Have a "Brin-L Action Disciplinary Committee (BAD Committee)" (chosen by vote of the list membership) who has the ultimate authority and responsibility to pass judgement on their fellow list-members' actions (pro: no endless online debating -- con: tyrrany of the minority, possible lack of transparency) 5) Some other system of handing out dings 6) No repercussions for *anything* said or done on Brin-L (pro: completely freewheeling discussion -- con: loss of civility causing possible/probable loss of some list members) Comments? Ideas? By the way, this is *far* more detailed than anything I saw in the archives of the test list when I looked. Reggie Bautista _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
