Re: post-moderating this list

[Matt Nicholas]

On 12/22/12 12:13 AM, John W. Eaton wrote:
> But I have set the moderation flag for your subscription.  I'll happily approve 
> messages from you if they are on
> topic and not abusive or written with a condescending tone.
Much like Stephen wrote earlier, I also have no horse in this race. I 
continue subscribing to this list because I occasionally find it 
interesting/helpful, and I occasionally try to help if I see a problem 
with no response that I think I know how to solve. I certainly came here 
for technical help, not to argue over the definitions of "free"; some of 
the recent discussions have clearly gotten out of hand. I just want to 
point a few things, as a relative outsider.

1) The needling between Sergei and others frequently goes *both ways*, 
and he is certainly not the only one guilty of condescension, hyperbole, 
or ad hominem attacks. I can recall at least one example of a perfectly 
on-topic message of his being met with a rather unfriendly response, 
which I believe was also factually incorrect (moderating his account 
alone seems unreasonable to me, FWIW, though I do not mean this as an 
endorsement of all of his messages). This sort of positive feedback of 
negativity can  be eliminated if *either side* is willing to take the 
moral high ground (added bonus: the person who quits first wastes less 
of his life flaming the email list...I am about to take my own advice on 
this one). Similarly, the cycle will be less likely to begin if everyone 
agrees to be on 'best behavior' from the outset.

2) list moderation is generally best done by someone who has little at 
stake, and is able to follow #1 (no I am not volunteering :D).

3) The 'off-topic' conversations are often interesting, and provide 
helpful information related to a variety of technical issues (e.g. 
alternative software) provided by people on both sides of the issues. 
Prohibiting such arguments (and arguments in general) makes the list 
less useful. The simple solution is that these topics should simply be 
broken off into separate threads as appropriate (this was basically 
suggested already), e.g. "GPL sucks (was: matrix multiplication 
error)".  This keeps the information better organized for archiving 
purposes, does not hijack the original thread, and allows those who are 
not interested to simply delete the 'offending' messages.