Chris Ilias wrote: > How about an addendum to the Forum Etiquette page under "Stay on topic": > Stay on topic.
> These are generally high-traffic groups, so please pay attention to > the topic of your messages, and check that it still relates to the > charter of the forum to which you are posting. Off-topic discussion not > taken to private email, mozilla.general, or any place where it is not > considered off-topic, by someone who knows they should be taking it > elsewhere, is eligible for removal from the news server.
Sounds good, as far as it goes. But that doesn't say anything about who does the cancelling, after what procedure. How about the following? (This wouldn't go on the etiquette page, but somewhere else.)
A to-be-determined group (minimum 2) of those people who offer technical support in the newsgroups, and who have a good track record of being on-topic and complying with etiquette, will monitor the groups. If they agree that someone is regularly off-topic or repeatedly violates the etiquette document in other ways, that will warn them by private email (or in the newsgroup if the email address cannot be determined). If they later agree that the behaviour has not changed, they will notify the person by email (or newsgroup post, as above) and then start to cancel any and all infringing posts from that person.
At least the first time round, an emailed assurance of reformation, plus a practical demonstration of a couple of weeks in length (where the group feels the need to cancel no or very few posts), will reset the process.
Is this lightweight enough and yet has sufficient controls? It concentrates on particular people rather than particular posts or types of content - but I think that's the right way to go in order to give ordinary users the assurance that their posts are not just going to disappear.
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