Re: Question for A. Towns - NM
Ean Schuessler wrote:
On Friday 04 March 2005 06:21 am, Anthony Towns wrote:
I can think of a few ways to try to resolve this. The most important is
killing "noise", by which I primarily mean off-topic threads, but also
mails generally that don't add anything to the discussion because
they're, eg, just rehashing old arguments, or outright spam, or similar.
Perhaps we can source some code from the Chinese government. I believe they
have a similar method of maintaining "political order". Pray do chose your
"listmaster" committee carefully.
*shrug* If I don't, it can always be changed to others, or they can be
talked to, or the whole idea can be dropped. If we're really worried
about the prospect of people going insane with power, then that would be
one reason to keep the technical listmasters separate from the policy
listmasters.
I think the following messages should have resulted in the posters being
sanctioned to some degree, eg:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/02/msg00022.html
- campaigning is limited to a set three week period, campaigning
for or against potential candidates outside this time is off-topic
Your selections have already picked up some bias. Branden was able to unfairly
campaign in advance through his "100 supporters" technique but this has
escaped your notice.
Not in particular, however it wasn't done over the lists, so doesn't
really have any effect on the quality of our lists. If you were troubled
by this, far better to address it directly by saying something like
"Offering and gathering public support for a candidate and his policies
is campaigning -- please don't do this until the campaigning period
starts" than to descend to the same level. Having to fight fire with
fire is the worst result of our current list environment -- it just
plain doesn't work.
In any case, this is precisely what makes on-topic requirements for
mailing lists different to government censorship -- there _are_ other
forums to discuss topics deemed off-topic. If you want to campaign over
a beer, or on your blog, or by a mass mail out to developers, you
certainly can.
At least my "campaining" has the excuse of thousands of
misplaced Debian dollars driving it.
That's fine, it's not a question of whether you're selfless, hard
working, or looking out for the best interests of Debian; it's whether
the mail was on-topic or not. I'd be surprised if it weren't possible to
find some mail that I've written to Debian lists that would qualify for
some level of sanction too, eg. That's fine -- I think we've all screwed
up, and I think we should start giving ourselves a reminder to get it right.
For reference, similarly fascist policies I've implemented in the past
have been the BTS control@ abuse banning [0] I mentioned in my platform,
and NMU abuse banning [1]. I don't think they're enjoyable for anyone --
I certainly don't find enforcing them any fun, but I do think knowing
there are some consequences to breaking the boundaries of good behavour
are helpful.
Cheers,
aj
[0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/12/msg01980.html
[1] http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/2003/08/20
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