Date   : Mon, 04 Jul 2005 13:49:02 +0100
From   : Jon Ripley <jon@...>
Subject: Re: Mailbox overloaded - mailing list tools required?

Samwise wrote:

> Seemingly over the past few months I've seen a number of topics
> seemingly get out of hand


I don't believe that any problems have yet reached the stage where full
scale moderation of all posts to this list is required. Such a step, I
believe, would do more harm than good.

Self moderation may be something to try with a few members nominated to
email privately any member who is misbehaving. Such emails should always
be calm and polite where possible. If this was chosen I would prefer the
members to be nominated somehow, and perhaps listed on the archive, so
that whenever a private message was required there would be some
knowledge that they were behaving in a somewhat 'official'ish capacity.

The list has had a lot more interest in the last eighteen months than it
has had for several years previously. Several new members have joined
recently, some are new to the internet, email, mailing lists, computers
or any combination of the above. Education is the only way.

As for broken headers, this would be up to James Fidell to fix if he
sees fit to. With respect to filtering I have found that filtering any
message with [BBCMicro] in the subject line into a separate mail folder
to be 100% effective. Kill files are useful to protect oneself from
receiving any messages from known individuals who you do not wish to
receive correspondence from.

> Question, then - has anyone suggested moving the mailing list?


Moving the list, would be in my opinion, a rather rash action which may
likely cause more problems than it would solve, I believe that we could
lose the majority of our members. This mailing list is mature, well
known and easy to find.

> There is also a chat forum and a page to set up polls, as


There are a few members of this list who access this list entirely from
BBC Microcomputers via bulletin boards via 14k4 modems, these users
would be unable to easily become members of any web-based group
messaging system or take part in any of the perceived benefits.

File space can be donated by users who have space hosting, polls can be
run by email or on user web sites, members can meet up on IRC for a chat
anytime. I believe that all the features we need are either already here
or can be provided fairly easily when the need arises.

If this mailing list was permanently deleted and/or moved to another
location the archive would suffer greatly.

> I'm not suggesting this list is fundamentally broken but it's reached
> the point where I thought I'd ask the question.
> 
> Thoughts on this new topic, anyone?


1. The mailing list archive site has some useful help and information
about this mailing list, currently this focuses on subscription related
issues but I would be willing to add a guide to the nettiquette of the
mailing list, such as do's and don'ts, and any other relevant
information that was deemed useful.

If anyone wants to draft up some suggestions and send them to me
privately I will consider everything that is received.

2. If 1 happens then I would ask James Fidell to consider adding a link
to the 'useful information' and also to the archive in the 'Welcome'
email for new members joining this list.

3. Nominate a few good natured members of this list to be part of a
welcoming committee or a self moderation team. Perhaps standard
responses could be written for the most common issues. Such as, mailer
configuration, how to send plain text messages, not to disclose too much
personal information, that everything said on this list will be archived
for anybody in the world to see.

4. Suggest a scheme for subject lines for messages posted to this list
to enable people to filter out messages they do not wish to receive or
to mark message types. This would be unnecessary for the majority of the
time but suggested subject prefixes could include:

[OT] off-topic
[Rant] Soapbox issues
[Ann] or [Announce] for announcements
[FAQ] Frequently asked questions (see below and only if deemed necessary)

Also how to move a subject gracefully to a different topic, such as:
[BBCMicro] What is your favourite cheese? (was: BeebEm 1.50)

James is doing us all a wonderful service by keeping this list open and
active, I feel that we should keep any moderation within the members of
this list and not unnecessarily burden James with any more work.

I'll shut up now...
Jon Ripley
-- 
http://jonripley.com/