On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Pablo Sanchez <pa...@blueoakdb.com> wrote: > [ Comments below, in-line ] > > On 03/22/2013 06:41 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: >> > > Hi Chris, > >> This is very unusual for a list like this. (But then, this is a >> somewhat unusual list in a few ways.) > > :) ... I hope that's a compliment to the list members.
No, but nor is it the opposite. >> What does it mean to be an admin? > > It's not a difficult job. I'd say it's easy because we've automated > many things. > > The list was open until we got a troll who kept harassing one of the > members. I had to implement some Regular Expressions to block the > troll, chase the origination of the messages to get him kicked off at > that location. That was unusual but it did change how we accept new > users. > > When a new user subscribes to the list, they're put on hold until we > vet them. I'm on M/W/F and Fernando is on T/Th/Sat/Sun. Basically, > we want to ensure new people are a spammers or trolls. > > If we can't find anything on the Internet with the subscriber's email > address, we send out a very opened ended message, requesting more > information. > > Some people on the list are familiar with that message. :) :) :) Right, this is about what I would expect of it. Most of the adminning is done by Mailman, and the humans make sure that it's only humans who post. >> In fact, most lists of this nature run as Charlieocracies [1], > > Nice! I had never heard that term until now. No surprise; many native English speakers aren't familiar with The Goon Show either. But it's an absolute classic, and well worth a bit of exploration if you have a chance. Top-quality BBC comedy radio; pretty much every comedian since them has been influenced, directly or indirectly, by them. >> So the bar for removing someone should be fairly high - some fairly >> egregious act of misconduct. > > This is the part where I disagree. :) > > I think if there are a sufficient number of people who are not happy > with an admin, they should step aside. > > I've purposely set the bar low because I'd rather not do something if > I'm upsetting 58 people. That's actually a fairly high bar. How many threads, on _any_ topic, attract responses from 58 unique people? The normal operation of an open-source community is that it has a king, and if that king is doing a bad job, people are free to leave. (This has already happened to this list, according to its listinfo page - Sun Microsystems was the previous king, and this list was created to bypass a problem.) It's not democratic, in any sense of the word. It's certainly not run by the popular vote. If the king wishes to abdicate his throne, he has to find someone else to run the place (and, if he chooses badly, people will leave). But the king need not feel obliged to resign over anything. The very worst that can happen is that people leave and start a new mailing list with a new king. Some of you may not like the implication, but the fact is, this sort of community follows principles laid down in the Bible. But that's simply because those principles *work*. ;) ChrisA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar _______________________________________________ VBox-users-community mailing list VBox-users-community@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vbox-users-community _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe: mailto:vbox-users-community-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=unsubscribe
