[Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list

Tue Dec 5 08:54:05 UTC 2006

Michael Snow wrote:

> You think trying to make a joke excuses comments like that?

One problem with open and unmoderated mailing lists is that the 
preferred way to respond to stupid messages or insults is with 
silence.  If everybody who disliked the message would protest, 
like Michael did here, the list would be flooded.  And if any 
single person protests against every stupid message, that person 
might end up dominating the list, like someone who doesn't know 
how to moderate themselves.  (Like those who argue about 
Wikipedias in certain languages that begin with M.)  Open mailing 
lists offer no good way to express sympathy with a protest.  
Instead there is a strong incentive for sensible list members not 
to protest against offensive messages.  And the offended person 
has no real way to distinguish this from agreement with the 
offense or from cowardice.  If this list is a kitchen, everybody 
just cares for their own cup, and nobody cleans the room.

If this was instead a wiki talk page, the offending message could 
be removed and most of the harm would be undone.  If one person 
removes the offense, other readers agree by just doing nothing. 
No, I don't suggest we replace all mailing lists with wiki 
discussions.  I only mention this as an inherent difference (a 
bias) between open mailing lists and other technical solutions.

A moderator (kitchen cleaner?) could throw the offender off the 
list, but this is an open list.  This could be the strongest 
argument for keeping the wikichix list closed (membership 
moderated).

-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se