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John Levine, author of "The Internet For Dummies," once set up a robo-moderation |
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process for the Usenet newsgroup soc.religion.unitarian-univ |
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(Unitarian Universalists). |
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The group, along with most of Usenet, ultimately "died" due to lack of |
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attention from |
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the moderators, who failed to curb one of their own. |
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|
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However, the robo-moderator worked quite well, and still is |
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technically in-place. The |
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first post by a person generated an email to the poster to verify the |
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email addres, |
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and required the poster to reply with a confirmation. The posts then |
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went through |
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without anyone having to approve or whilelist things. If a poster subsequently |
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became a "problem" their postings could be placed in a moderation |
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required status, |
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and some human would evelute the posts and handle the quelling of off-topic or |
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flame generating posts. In extreme cases, posters could be banned for |
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varying periods |
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of time. |
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|
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The programs where quite powerful, and amazingly simple and elegant to implent. |
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The source is available, and should be easily adapted for practically |
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any system with |
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bash shell hook capabilities. The infra team might want to look at |
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that code and try |
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something like it. Some addresses can be injected at setup time requiring human |
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action before posts are approved (Rejected posts would be sent back to the perp |
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requesting re-writing or abandoning. |
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|
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The moderators did not have to login anywhere to work with the bot, |
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all interactions |
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were done via email. The system is/was quite nice, and my mangled memories |
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should not be the deciding factors when looking at it. |
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|
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Such a system might well serve as a means of allowing fully free entry into the |
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list, while still providing the ability to control things if it gets |
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out of hand. |
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|
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On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 1:19 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:55 PM, R0b0t1 <r030t1@×××××.com> wrote: |
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>> |
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>> I can't tell, and I suspect other people can't either. |
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>> |
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> |
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> This is the crux of the issue. Decisions involving people issues are |
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> made behind closed doors, which means that others are not free to |
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> confirm for themselves whether those actions are correct. This tends |
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> to lead to ongoing debate over whether those decisions were |
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> appropriate, with everybody arguing from their own knowledge, and the |
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> only ones who know the information used to make the decision are |
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> barred from talking about it. This is basically a debate where |
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> participation is limited to the ignorant, at least as far as the |
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> particular details go (the general principles are debated by all). |
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> |
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> That said, even if the decisions were made in the open I wouldn't |
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> expect all to agree with them. |
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> |
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> Ultimately though there are pros and cons to making these kinds of |
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> decisions in the open, and there is not universal agreement regarding |
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> how these situations ought to be handled. We can either fight about |
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> it until the end of time, or we can agree on some way to determine |
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> what approach we are going to take and then support it (perhaps |
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> begrudgingly). Right now the mechanism that we have in place is the |
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> Council. The only other mechanism I could see that would make any |
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> sense would be a referendum on the issue. That gets unwieldy if we |
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> try to apply it to every little decision, but maybe for the big |
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> picture issues it would make sense. |
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> |
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> However, I think a lot of people would be surprised at the outcome. |
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> We all assume that we're all here for the same reasons, but as I |
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> commented on my blog Gentoo is a bit unique among distros and many of |
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> us are here for very different reasons, and have different priorities. |
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> Also, there is sometimes a tendency to assume that all FOSS projects |
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> work the same way. When I was listening to a talk about how one of |
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> the BSDs dealt with these kinds of issues I was shocked to discover |
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> that much of their dev communications happens on completely closed |
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> lists (not just closed to posting, but to reading as well). Gentoo |
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> has the gentoo-core list but it is very low traffic and it tends to be |
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> used for things like swapping cell phone numbers before conferences. |
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> When anything substantive comes up there are usually several people |
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> who chime in to rightly point out that this talk belongs on a public |
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> list. |
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> |
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> Bottom line is that there are a lot of different ways projects can |
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> run, and they all have their pros and cons. A lot of the FOSS we |
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> depend on actually gets built or discussed behind closed doors. I |
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> doubt many of us want Gentoo to go that far, but I suspect there is a |
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> lot of interest in taking smaller steps in that general direction. |
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> |
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> -- |
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> Rich |
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> |
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|
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|
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|
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-- |
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G.Wolfe Woodbury |
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redwolfe@×××××.com |