On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 7:12 PM, Foster, Dawn M <[email protected]> wrote: > On Oct 21, 2010, at 3:39 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote: >> This happened because I replied to a mail that had >> [email protected] in CC. This I think is a good thing, >> cross-posting helps to get relevant messages to relevant people. > > Actually, cross-posting is strongly discouraged in the MeeGo mailing > list guidleines. You can see our guidelines for more details: > http://wiki.meego.com/Mailing_list_guidelines
Then the guidelines need updating. > Cross-posting results in duplicate messages and multiple unconnected > conversations happening across mailing lists. We encourage you to > pick the mailing list that is the most appropriate and have a single > conversation on a single list. Sometimes the is no appropriate mailing list, but appropriate mailing list*s*. >> However, in order for cross-posting to be useful people should be able >> to send mails to lists they are not subscribed to, otherwise the >> threads will be messed up. >> >> One way to achieve this is to only require a subscription to _one_ >> list, in order to allow sending messages to all of them. I have never >> seen anybody doing this though. >> >> My preferred option is to allow anybody to post, but go through >> moderation if not subscribed. This welcomes everybody into the >> discussion, and even allows for cross-posting between lists that are >> not meego.com. Many mailing lists, like all the ones in vger do this: >> http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html >> >> What do you think? > > I gave this quite a bit of thought, and I think it's fair to make the person > sending the message decide whether they really want to send it to the list. > This puts the decision on the user - by signing up, they are taking the > responsibility for understanding what they signed up for. We've already > had one serious case of someone sending a big chunk of proprietary stuff > to a list because he didn't realize it was a public list. In that case, his > message wasn't posted because he wasn't subscribed, and he was pretty > happy about it. Moderation also has some problems because the moderator > is taking the responsibilty for deciding what the user meant to do. The way > we have it set up now, we're putting the decision in the users' hands, which > seems fair to me. As it was already mentioned, the argument of some random guy posting something proprietary by mistake is irrelevant: 1) The fact that a mailing list requires subscription says nothing about whether it's public or not, so the person might see the non-subscribed error, subscribe and resend 2) He might be already subscribed, and the damage gets done 3) If he is not subscribed, he will get a mail saying his message is posted for moderation, just like the current one, and the effect would be the same... If he realizes this is a public mailing list, he can by himself remove the message 4) If he is not subscribed, nor realizes the list is public, the moderator can still bounce back the message realizing the mistake 5) Whatever happens in this exceptional scenario should not dictate the typical process of the mailing list; affecting negatively communication for the vast majority of users in case somebody makes a mistake is not good. So, moderation is not taking away anything from users; if the user clicked "send", he meant to send the mail. > All of this is clearly documented in our mailing list guidelines, and in the > email they get if they send something to a list where they aren't subscribed. > > Either way has pros and cons, but this way seems to be working for most > people. I still don't see the cons. Regardless of moderation vs single subscription, cross-posting is useful. -- Felipe Contreras _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
