On Tuesday 17 February 2009 20:38:21 Anurag wrote: > Continue flaming each other, and both of you will be put on moderation > for a week.
frankly I do not understand this. Neither of them are newbies. Both of them are valuable members of this list. What are you going to achieve by moderating them for a week? Are you going to counsel and reform them? Or do you feel 'punishment' will make them 'repent' (if they have committed some crime)? This whole 'crime and punishment' outlook does not sit well in a community like this. Agreed, obvious spammers should be banned (not moderated). Newbies doing things because they dont know the rules should be politely corrected by peer pressure. Apart from that, nothing constructive will be achieved by moderation which is an archaic concept from the dark ages and more suited to places like china where the whole country is under moderation. Also moderation is not good for the moderator. When an admin starts moderating people, however nice a guy he is, he starts to get a little power mad. I was once kicked from a channel by a guy who did it just to show me that he had been granted ops on the channel! If you moderate non-newbies, they will most probably leave the list and never rejoin. And the community will be the loser. In this case, the discussion is highly relevant as it gives a clear pointer as to why so few women appear on community mailing lists. This is a problem that worries a lot of us. I personally was horrified at the sexist way a woman respected in the community was addressed as 'my dear'. And am appreciative of the fact that she is holding her own. Please do not bring up things like 'moderation' and threats to ban people who are non-spammers. Rely on peer pressure. That is the way a community grows. Check the mailing lists around the country - the more heavily moderated a list is, the faster it dies down. For the past few years both Chennai and Mumbai lists have been very free with the admins keeping a very low profile. Please continue this. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
