(I'm trying to catch up on e-mail, so I'm going to edit heavily, and respond to multiple people in one message. Sorry if you don't like the format, but I thought it was better than deluging the list with nine or ten separate replies....)
Just some accumulated responses on the "I know this is off-topic, but..." thread, now that I'm actually catching up Bernie Cosell: >But, not exactly 'lazy' --- I think you're vastly underestimating the hassle >and the entry barrier to dropping into a new, focused forum to ask a one-time >question. No, I don't think so. I know how tough it can be. That's why I'm tolerant of it at all. But on the other side of things, I have to worry about and trade off what hassles that stuff cause subscribers and the list. That's my struggle. I don't want ot end up with mailing lists titled "stuff on the internet", but I'm way out of my list-nazi stage of life. Vince Sabio: >FWIW, it is not uncommon for us to receive off-list messages of >thanks whenever we kill an off-topic thread. It seems that the folks >who enjoy -- or even tolerate -- such threads are well in the >minority, though of course it varies I'm not sure that's a safe assumption. Unhappy people give feedback. Happy people don't. fact of life. So you'll hear from folks who appreciate you doing away with something they don't like. You'll rarely hear from folks who say "I want off-topic stuff". Most folks don't like off-topic stuff, except when they do, and it's that "except when they do" part that's the fun part; good off-topic stuff is well-received, even by most folks who don't want the list to wander. But "good" isn't easy to define... Greg Woods: >I definitely don't want to get into publically admonishing one of the >list's regular and respected posters, so in that case I might publically >let it go, and privately ask the person please not to post stuff that >they *know* is off-topic, but if it's somebody relatively new on the >list, defines my policy pretty well. The more a person contributes to the list, the more I cut them slack, even if I disgree with their decision. They've earned it with sweat equity. And I generally try to administer in private, except when the list in general needs a reminder or to be spanked. I've done the "public flogging as an example to the rest of you", but these days, I try to stay away from that most of the time. I'm uncomfortable with how it treates the poor floggee. Sometimes, though, they've earned it. but mostly, I try to disconnect the lesson from the person in the stocks....Excedpt when I don't. JC Lawrence: >I try and build lists where the membership have the general view that >they need to aggressively defend topicality. And I tend more to building things where the list is more "people with this interest" than "list on this topic". Even at Apple, with the heavy tech stuff, I let the community aspects develop, although with a much shorter leash. I think people who know (and mostly like) each other tend ot work better together, and it's the side-chat that lends itself to that getting-to-know-you part. You can't let it take over (or maybe you can, if you're primary interest is community), but I find it useful for building relationships inside the list community. Janet Detter Margul: >My list handles that by labeling those in the subject line with the >prefix TAN: I have mixed feelings about this. I find it works better in smaller groups that have been together for a while. the larger the list, the harder it is to make work. You can't (basically by definition) make it happen by technology, and I don't have time as admin to wander through lists noodging people to adopt it. The big problem I run into wtih it at times is when some group decides it "has to happen", and goes into cowboy mode on everyone who doesn't follow suit. I've decided that if groups want to self-build standards like this, that's great. I won't make them formal policy, though, because I don't want to get into the meta-fights over stuff that should or shoudln't be flagged, or the cowboy admins going off to take policy into their own hands. You can create some nasty fights that way, and the advantages are fairly minor, so I leave it informal and slap the cowboys before they spook the herd... (grin) JC Dill: >At some point the list manager started publicly (posting "to the list") >"slapping" people with a dead fish for off-topic posts. It wasn't the "salmon of contrition", was it? I ask because a community I was in many years ago invented that concept, and I know it's spread to some other communnities around the net from there. I've been known to use it to get a point across in a non-in-your-face way at times, too. (for much the same reason I coined the term list-mom as a non-aggressive term for admin, the salmon of contrition is a way to remind someone to get their act together, but with an image that is, well, hard to take seriously. so you have a serious point and a non-serious imagery attached, and it makes a situation a lot less confrontational. Which can be very effective if you have people yelling at each other, and you want to break up a fight without them all turning on you instead....) >IME, if you let a single thread like this go unchecked (and have a lot of >novice Internet users on your list), the threads multiply like bunnies, and >your most clueful on-topic contributers end up silent, and then leave. > >How do other list managers address this problem? I used to worry about the "if I do this, I set a precedent" problem. I've found, though, that mostly, people don't pay attention that closely, and if you leave a "because I'm the mother" clause in your list rules, you might not make them happy, but you can get away with it. I try to have a good explanation for why A was okay, but B wasn't-- and frankly, if I can't, then maybe I'm wrong, no? but I'm a lot less worried about the precedent issue on lists these days, since people don't seem to use that as much as I'd worried. Cyndi Norman: >So what's off topic? Virus warnings, you know what? As bad as it's gotten "out there", I finally gave up on this. Sometimes, you need to spread the word. Bogus stuff, and all that fake e-mail virus warning crap, I still step on hard, but if someone got infected and wants to warn folks, even though my list is protected, once viruses started mailing out of address books, one subscriber CAN now infect another subscriber, without going through the list where I can control it. A really, nasty problem. I think I want those fake e-mail virus hoaxes back, personally. Those I can deal with... Jeffrey Goldberg: >I try to intervene before list members feel the need to act themselves >(and before they unsubscribe). that is THE key, Jeffrey. And that means knowing your list populations. And each list is different, even if you manage them the same. (a while back, Apple, bless them, hired me an assistant to free me up for more development work. He now does most of the first-pass postmaster stuff for me, as well as machine admin and other stuff. And he's learning, fast, that the technical stuff is the easy part of mail lists... It's dealing with people that takes the time....) Chuq
