HI Achal, On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Achal Prabhala <aprabh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Hari and Anirudh, > > As moderators of WikimediaIndia-l, could you describe the policy you > normally adopt towards moderation? > > Do you only block obvious spam or other messages, and if so on what basis? > > I am naturally curious since a message from Praveen that you only just > released seems to have been sent in 3 days ago.
I'm not privy to the settings on this list, but here is what I think happened. This list is not moderated per ante, or the moderators would have to approve all of our messages, whether we're subscribed or not. So it's probably only "auto-moderated" through the spam filter, which means that messages that the mailman spam filter considers spam are put on hold. This is where the moderators come into play. They have to review messages and decide what is spam and what is not. Being an admin on many other wikimedia mailing lists, I can tell you from my own experience that on an open subscription list (like this one), the amount of spam is usually important, but that very few people actually try to write to the list while not subscribed. Which means that as an admin, you probably only need to check every few days to make sure nothing got caught that shouldn't have been. Now, Praveen's email has an image embedded in it... and that, my friend, is very quickly considered spam by mailman (the software). So my take is that his email (although he is a member of this list) was considered spam and held for moderation by the software. The mods checking in a fews days later released the message, hence the delay. So I would not see any act of moderation from anyone human in this delayed message...in an ideal world, it should not have been blocked in the first place, but mailman's spam filter is a killer. > > Furthermore, I think we'd benefit from understanding how people may > apply to become administrators on this list. > > In light of Anirudh's recent appointment to administrator of this list, > is there an open process by which other members might apply? > (Foundation-l seems to have three administrators, though I would imagine > that there is nothing stopping WikimediaIndia-l from having more than > three). In such country/chapter-related lists, the "usual practice" is to have anyone interested to say "I'll moderate", and given they are not a famous troll, give them the tools. Now, let's face it, moderation is a big word, unless the list is really heated and personal attacks fly around all the time. The moderator "work" usually involves more "janitor work" (see above the spam explanation) than real moderation and can become really "not fun". So you need motivated people who are not just trying to make it look as if they'll be doing anything. :P This said, experience tells me that 3/4 moderators is a good number, so that when/if moderation needs to occur, mods can exchange between themselves as to whether moderation is needed on a particular topic/of a particular individual. More people, in my experience, usually leads to stagnation, as mods expects the other mods will have cleared the spam and checked the messages held and don't bother looking at the queue (been there, done that). Cheers, Delphine -- @notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l