we've discussed this before (more than once in fact) and have come to
the conclusion that the benefits of enabling topics in mailman do not
offer any significant benefits that can not be achieved in other ways
(procmail/sieve rules, client filtering, etc). adding another "feature"
to a system that is currently without a sysadmin is not something i'm
willing to endorse at this point in time. once the sysadmin role is
established we'll reopen the idea for consideration on the SC.
the alternative is to ask everyone to keep their posts reasonable. what
is reasonable? that's very difficult to define, and everyone will have
their own unique definition. but let me suggest a few basic guidelines
for things that are not appropriate:
- totally non-FOSS or computer/technology related topics
- very long threads that have veered far off topic
- posts will no informational value (me too! posts, obscure inside
jokes, etc)
- posts that are little more than a back and forth conversation between
two people
- public replies to a post that specifically requests offlist replies
(admittedly lots of people, myself included, have done this by accident)
- personal attacks, vulgarism, etc.
obviously these are subject to interpretation and not carved in stone,
just a few things off the top of my head. the reason our mailing list
tends to "work" is that most people inherently understand these kinds of
guidelines and generally abide by them. and while we all have
occational lapses, things can quickly degenerate into chaos unless the
majority of posters adhere to these "unwritten" rules.
a popular refrain is "use your delete button if you don't like it". i
do not believe that attitude is appropriate for this list. the trilug
mailing list has a distinct theme - linux and open source, and to a
lesser extent computers and technology in general. it is not a free for
all. it is not thunderdome. there are approx 600 subscribers, and it
is NOT reasonable to expect most of them to take special action to
filter out extraneous posts because a small minority are unable or
unwilling to exhibit a modicum of self-restraint. there are plenty of
mailing lists, forums, newsgroups, and bulletin boards where anything
(or almost anything) goes. the trilug list is not one of them.
the trilug mailing list is unmoderated, and always has been. i for one
want to keep it that way, but that only works if we all are using the
same rulebook and respect both the list guidelines and each other.
jason tower
trilug steering committee chairman
Tanner Lovelace wrote:
Mailman can be setup to recognize messages labeled like this as
"Topics" and can also be setup for the user to decide if they want to
receive a particular topic. I would be more than happy to set this up
for the TriLUG list with the Steering Commitee's permission.
This would basically allow anyone subscribed to the list to go to
their list configuration page and unclick a checkbox to indicate
that they didn't want to receive messages with OT: in the subject.
Besides making it easy for subscribers, it could also lessen the
load on the mailman server and mail server, since those messages
would be filtered out *before* being sent.
--
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