On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 4:55 PM Valorie Zimmerman <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 3:31 PM Albert Astals Cid <[email protected]> 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 > >
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