Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: ML changes

[Marius Mauch]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:16:36 -0600
Ryan Hill <dirtyepic@g.o> wrote:

> Christina Fullam wrote:
> > I think everyone is overlooking the part included previously:
> > "An additional method discussed was to have all non-dev emails on a
> > timeout, pick a number of hours, and then the email if not moderated
> > would be released. (non-dev sends his email, time period expires
> > and no one booted it, so the email rolls through)"
> >
> > This means that non-dev emails will still be sent to the list, just
> > at a delay. This same delay can and will be exercised against
> > developers if the developer demonstrates a justification for it.
> > This also means that non-dev input will be accepted and viewed as it
> > always has, the only change is that there is a delay.
>
> Then what, exactly, is the damned point?  The problem this is
> supposedly intended to solve is that -dev is too high-volume.  This
> solution requires people to actually put MORE effort into reading
> -dev than they previously did.  No one is going to actually do any
> monitoring, so all you've done is made posts from non-dev accounts
> time delayed.  Why?

Well, I orignally proposed this as a reaction to the "beejay incident",
where a single mail caused complete havoc on this list. I think
everyone would agree that that specific mail should never have been
posted, as it's purpose was obvious to create trouble, and
unfortunately some people couldn't resist to reply.
I don't really like the idea (and only proposed it as an alternative to
splitting the list into -dev and -dev-announce), but as long as people
can't control themselves to ignore such posts (and I don't see that
changing ever) we need a way to stop them to prevent further
damage.
Yes, that incident was an extreme exception, but I really don't want to
see something like that ever happen again, and reactionary methods
simply don't work IMHO.

Just for completeness: My original proposal included delaying all
posts and a special moderation group, only later the idea of separate
policies for dev and non-dev mails was brought up. And to repeat: It
was meant as an alternative to splitting the list into an informational
and a discussion list (which is different than the -project idea).

Marius

PS: In case you're looking for a reference, this was on -core on June
7th.

-- 
Marius Mauch <genone@g.o>
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