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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable



Hi,

On Wed, 02 May 2012, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> Not adding to the noise is reducing the noise. And especially telling
> people that you do not care about their arguments because you they are
> not insiders, which this is from some point of view, is the noise that
> makes an discussion in my eyes the most unwelcoming and thus a good
> reason to only expect noise and no more signal.

Which is why I reply to those "outsiders" privately and gently point
them to a page that lists some of the mistakes they are doing
(FTR it's http://raphaelhertzog.com/go/ml/).

I certainly agree with Russ that several non-contributors had a
significant negative impact on recent discussions and that we ought
to be doing something about this.

When I see that the bad patterns tend to continue, I mail the listmasters
and ask them to send a warning to to the person. If enough persons
complain, they might even put a filter if that person doesn't stop.

But it's difficult to do it on a regular basis because:
- if I'm alone doing it, it won't have much impact
- given I have no way to know that others are doing the same, I tend to
  assume that it doesn't help much, and thus loses some of the motivation
  to draft gentle replies pointing out the problematic behaviour

Maybe we need a private DD-only list where people interested in
improving our lists can CC their private complaints. listmasters
could follow the list and take action when they notice that
the same person got multiple complaints.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/


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