Hi Steve, As often happens lately, an interesting post has quickly been swallowed up into an angry cacophony. That's why the reasonable people, if there are any, don't post.
> I've been trying to find someone to moderate the list along the Etiquette > guidelines on the wiki. Mikel has given up, understandably, and he leads the > main moderators. We found one native Australian to moderate but they backed > out because they literally feared for their job safety, that the people who > now inhabit the list would make life with their employer difficult. Thus, > they declined to do so after initially accepting. I actually am convinced > that was the right decision and the people on that list are capable of it. I'd be interested to hear more about the risks. I'd consider doing it - I've been a moderator on the English Wikipedia list for years. But you need a pool, not just one moderator. > Let me be more clear, *I* don't want to be part of a community that accepts > this. Who in their right mind would want to be a part of a community run by > people explicitly out to disrupt, fork and troll? Agreed. It's horrible. >lists. Are there genuine questions about license, it's implementation and so >on? Absolutely. But level-headed discussion is not >welcome on talk-au for the >most part. There are a few people who can discuss this stuff impersonally >there but it's a small part of the >list. A small part of the list volume, certainly. > I don't want to be a part of a community that accepts this, so leaving it > as-is is not an option. Agreed. > We can remove everyone from talk-au and start afresh. No pseudonyms, no > license talk (would have to go to legal-talk) under the new list. This would > hit reset but remove people who have legitimate concerns and those just > trying to get on with mapping. I'm happy with that. talk-au might need slightly different etiquette rules from the other lists. Maybe. I think the reasonable people who want to talk about mapping would resubscribe. I'm not sure what the overall benefit would be - presumably the people who want to disrupt would resubscribe, too. But maybe a clear subscription statement like "This list is only for people who want to contribute to OpenStreetMap. If you are here to disrupt the project, you are not welcome." would help. > We can block the 'main' people. Then you have to draw the line somewhere > between the good and the bad anonymous posters. I would suggest anyone who's > posted that they want to disrupt the project and anyone operating under a > pseudonym. I'm ok with that. Of course the decision about who gets blocked will cause lengthy debate and criticism. > We can place everyone under the emergency moderation flag and clear each post > one by one, by moderator, by vote, I don't care. I can log in and do that too. That would work ok for a start. Then you start clearing the flag for people, with no hesitation in reapplying it if people break the rules. > Lots of people from talk@ could join talk-au@ and make it a nice place to be > again, the way we took back legal-talk@ from the very same people. I'm not sure it makes sense to have many non-Australians on the list? But maybe desperate measures... > Maybe you have a better option? I'd start with: - firm statement about what is and isn't acceptable now - place lots of people who have recently broken those rules on moderation - be liberal in adding more people to moderation as required In practice there's very little difference between placing someone on moderation and kicking them off the list entirely. Steve _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
