Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

[Gergely Nagy <algernon@balabit.hu>]

Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> writes:

> 2) "don't feed the troll" + report abuses to listmasters and act
>    accordingly

Of the three, this is the least disruptive, in my opinion. Of course,
all the problems you mention (social awkwardity, effort from the
community and extra burden on listmasters) apply, BUT!

Perhaps a compromise could be to close threads forcibly, and temporarily
ban everyone from posting to the list, if they attempt to post to a
closed thread after its closing has been announced (a little window
of error should be given, of course, half an hour tops, or thereabouts).

This reduces the social awkwardness, as we'd be reporting bad threads
instead of bad people, and threads don't mind. It would reduce the load
on listmasters, as threads are fewer than people, and there's less
emotion involved, and justification is easier.

And if so need be, the temporary bans can gradually increase in length
if one keeps on posting to closed threads.

I've seen things like this work reasonably well on web-based forums, and
while it is considerably harder to implement it on a mailing list (and
probably impossible to make it entirely correct at that), something
reasonably similar that works in most cases shouldn't be terribly hard
to implement. People abusing the shortcomings of the solution can still
be banned on a case-by-case basis.

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