On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:10:05 -0800
SRE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 09:24 PM 2/20/01, J C Lawrence wrote:
>> Yet, he is sabotauging the very community basis that found the
>> list and its value without also providing himself as a target for
>> moderation or removal.
> If he can ruin the list without breaking any rules, you need to
> announce NEW RULES!
The problem is that what he is doing is entirely attitudinal. His
posts are ontopic. They are not inherently noisy. They simply
convey an attidude which is dismissive, belittling, caustic, etc.
I'm not about to make a rule that, "Only happy posts from happy
people will be accepted."
> Try writing down how often and what he posts, see if you can find
> a pattern, and see if it's REALLY different from what others do
> (frequency, changing the subject, whatever).
Yup. I've done this analysis. He's a thread killer. He's also an
indirect noise injector (reponses to his posts tend to be noisy, and
threads tend to go noisy after he significantly participates).
Mostly I did an adjectival analysis which located that noisy threads
tended to contain posts from others which repeated the edjective
sequences he used in his participation in those threads, and that
those same patterns tended to recur in other threads shortly before
they died.
If you're wondering, the list runs 50+ posts a day, so, even tho
I've only looked at the last couple months, I've got ~4,500 posts
to disect to get a fairly reasonable pattern built.
> When a poster generates more complaints than compliments, I tell
> them (ON LIST, IN PUBLIC) that their attitude is burning up my
> time dealing with complaints. If others come to their defense, I
> have to leave them alone. If not, they get booted.
I have no complaints. Outside of this individual and one other
(with related commercial concerns) my average incidence of
complaints in any degree is under one per month (actually my average
rate of posts sent to the list owner about the list is well under
one per month, so the complaint rate is *really* low).
> I even set up a "list-issues" list so the quiet people don't have
> to listen to the yelling about who can say what. I filter the main
> lists as needed to keep the issues discussion in "the back room",
> and I invite people to contact me off-list if they don't want to
> say something for or against the attacker on-list.
<nod>
I've thought about such a split before but have always decided
against it. The single promise the list makes and maintains, and
has maintained for several years now, is that it will deliver
signal. We go meta periodically (few times a year), and there's a
parallel low-traffic meta list to sock up a bit of the side noise,
but it hasn't received much interest.
> Sometimes I find out that no one but me is bothered, and I back
> off. Most of the time I hear "hurrah for the good guys - nail the
> bastard" and then it doesn't matter if he broke the list rules:
> The mob rules!
Hehn. This would run rather counter to the culture I've established
on the list which is somewhat akin to the Hollywood version of the
English Gentlemen's Club with the wing backed armchairs, the genteel
sensibility, and the overt respect tones. As this is primarily a
technical forum I've taken this culture approach to try and keep the
attention off the people involved, off the personalities, and stuck
rigorously on the subject. Largely, its worked -- but it means
there are no mobs there. There's just a lot of, "Jolly good old
boy!" and small gesticulating groups busy figuring out some new
angle or twist.
--
J C Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------(*) http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
