I have another suggestion: ostracism.
There are a wide range of options. "Ostracism" takes many forms. The most harmless is that other members of the list set filters so they don't have to see the mail, or just skip it. But a raging flame war can harm the list in quite a few ways, not the least of which is the effect upon new members; were I a moderator with the requisite authority, there are probably several people I'd immediately put on moderation. Moderation is not ostracism, and it is not a punishment. It is harmless, so one can moderate first and ask questions later, and one can unmoderate. After all, moderating posts is a nuisance. It is not necessary to determine who "started it."
Were this an FA/DP organization, the moderator would be chosen by the allegedly offending member from among the qualified members. (By default, any member could be a moderator for this purpose, but a moderator who approves inappropriate posts could lose moderation privileges.) That kind of filtering is actually one of the functions of the proxy, protecting the larger group from noise from below, just as the proxy also protects the member from excess traffic from above.
This being an election methods mailing list, I'm sure that someone can design
an appropriate mechanism for the community to decide whether and to whom ostracism
should be applied.
Exactly. Simply discussing the matter will sometimes suffice, but it is a more general solution to create a decision-making apparatus. I'm proposing Free Association/Delegable Proxy concepts for this, but simple polls could work. A poll is not a vote. Rather, a poll is a means of measuring consensus. If any member of the list is allowed to create a poll question, and all members may answer it, then the problem of how the question is worded is actually avoided, because if any member thinks that the answer has been biased by the question, the member can reword it.
If, however, the number of polls becomes an onerous burden, delegable proxy would be a means of keeping the fully open process while reducing the traffic...
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