On 04/09/2015 05:23 PM, Jude Nelson wrote:
> Hi Johnathan,
>
> I should clarify what I had meant to say earlier in context--I believe
> I misspoke (serves me right to post with low blood sugar).
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 4:57 PM, Jude Nelson <judecn@???
> <mailto:judecn@gmail.com>> wrote:
>

>         The ML structure will neither fix nor prevent bad behavior. 
>         However, it can mitigate its effect on the project. For this
>         reason, I support Hendrik's idea of having a -tech mailing
>         list for technical topics only (but that both users and
>         developers can join).  I also support having a few guidelines
>         on more specialized mailing lists (should they be created)
>         that describe what behavior is appropriate on them, as well as
>         having a publicly-visible process in place for how to deal
>         with people who abuse their list membership.

>
>
> It was wrong of me to suggest that being off-topic in and of itself
> evil; that was not the intent of this paragraph. Sometimes, I use the
> phrase "bad behavior" in a general way to simply mean "behavior that
> is inconsistent with what is expected". In this case, it was not
> meant to be a statement about the quality of the content or the
> character of the poster, but rather about the context in which the
> post occurs. Not the best choice of words, I must admit.

I probably also wasn't clear, because my main concerns are a) there are
too many posts on this list that veer from the topic of an OS that's
trying to remove systemd, and b) the people doing the work on Devuan
have the right to respectfully make it clear that this Devuan ML isn't
the place for such topics.

One alternative idea is to create a moderated "tech" list and let this
current list discuss whatever it may. My point is that the entire
community would prefer such a "tech" list. Rather than create more
complexity why not use our social skills to influence _this_ list to
stay on topic? It should be possible to do that successfully, and in a
respectful manner.

>
> What I was trying to say is that no matter what ML structure Devuan
> goes with, it's not going to eliminate the fundamental problems with
> mailing lists (i.e. people can post off-topic, people can misspeak,
> people can come off as insensitive without meaning to, etc.). But, by
> grouping threads by topic (i.e. having separate MLs), we can mitigate
> some of the frustrations felt by some subscribers by helping them find
> only the emails that they want to read, since certain subjects lend
> themselves better to the sensibilities of the reader.
>
> I've said more than I wanted to say on the ML topic--I'm fine with
> whatever Devuan chooses to do, but if I had to express a preference,
> it would be for a separate -tech ML.

I think my preference would be for a -training-area list that is a
mandatory step to joining a -dev list. The person would acquire points
for each newcomer they help, and after a certain amount they can join
the dev list. Of course those points would burn off over time so devs
would have to periodically go back and retrain. Maybe there could be a
blockchain for this.

That's tongue-in-cheek, but I do find that most free software
communities have a weakness of ignoring social issues until they explode
in everyone's face. It'd be nice to find a neat hack to goad
problem-solvers into becoming social thinkers, too. :)

-Jonathan

>
> Thanks,
> -Jude