Open Access to API-Craft

[Sam Ramji]

There have been a few recruiting spammers lately who have ignored our community guidelines.  Their posts have prompted some discussion and certainly caused some frustration.  

One response we could take is to moderate access to our API-Craft community.  We (Brian and Sam) don’t think this is a good idea.  This community’s strength is in openness - sharing ideas, APIs, and experience.  A closed group to discuss technology openly seems oxymoronic.

Our policy in 2015 will remain the same - open access to API-Craft for all, and we will communicate with those are breaking our community guidelines:

• For inappropriate posts (vendor promotion and borderline topics) we will have a private discussion with the author.
• For recruiting spammers, we will generally simply delete the post and ban the author.  
• Hiring managers are still invited to post their own job openings with the expectation that they intend to handle these personally and thoughtfully.

Hopefully you agree with our reasoning and will continue to be a blessing to the API-Craft community.  

If you have better or different ideas about how to manage the group, please start a thread or send us a private message as you see fit.

Wishing you a New Year full of open discussions and awesome technology,

Brian and Sam

[Andrew Braae]

Its easy to suggest since the duty does not fall to me, but it would improve things if the spam was simply taken down much more quickly, e.g. within an hour or so. Most of it is pretty easy to identify, and removing it quickly might also prevent it making its way into people's mail boxes.

Also the group's current welcome message is ambiguous around who is allowed to post job openings - it just says "prospective employers" and does not specify hiring managers only. As you will be aware many companies employ in-house recruiters, what about them? (my two bits, I think it would be great to limit job posts to the actual hiring manager).

[MattM]

I think you guys do a phenomenal job moderating and I support keeping it open. Thanks, m@

[Steven Willmott]

Indeed - Kudos for that!

-- 
Steven Willmott

On January 16, 2015 at 8:30:12 PM, MattM (matthewmc...@gmail.com) wrote:

I think you guys do a phenomenal job moderating and I support keeping it open. Thanks, m@

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[Sam Ramji]

Good point.  I have changed the words to match our intent, which is "hiring managers".

We are also considering a call for 3-5 moderators who can hide messages that they see as failing to meet our community standards.  The goal would be to improve response times, thereby reducing how many non-compliant posts reach the broader community.

Does this sound like a good idea?

[wiki1000]

>We are also considering a call for 3-5 moderators who can hide messages that they see as failing to meet our community standards.  The goal would >be to improve response times, thereby reducing how many non-compliant posts reach the broader community.

>Does this sound like a good idea?

Definitively : NO!

[Richard Mateosian]

The devil is in the details. For some applications a smooth-running benevolent dictatorship beats a messy democracy.  :-)

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 8:10 PM, Sam Ramji <ramj...@gmail.com> wrote:

We are also considering a call for 3-5 moderators who can hide messages that they see as failing to meet our community standards.  

Does this sound like a good idea?

--

Richard Mateosian <x...@pacbell.net>
Berkeley, California

[Jack Repenning]

On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 8:10:44 PM UTC-8, Sam Ramji wrote:

We are also considering a call for 3-5 moderators who can hide messages that they see as failing to meet our community standards.  The goal would be to improve response times, thereby reducing how many non-compliant posts reach the broader community.

Does this simply mean the standard Google Groups moderation? Would you continue your current oversight, as described in the base post here?

In general, I agree that list moderation can become necessary, an unfortunate accompaniment of openness. In the particular case of this list, and speaking solely for myself, it doesn't seem that noisy, yet. But if you're saying that oversight is becoming too much of a burden, then I'd support off-loading you guys with a couple member-moderators (and I'd be willing to be one). 

[Sam Ramji]

Jack:

It would be standard Google Groups moderation.  Brian and I would continue our oversight role.

You've been a core member of the community since inception and it's meaningful that you'd be willing to moderate.

The idea behind moderation is simply this:

• We want every API-Craft member to have a positive experience
• This experience starts with quality content that is spam-free
• Neither Brian nor I feel we can keep after spammers fast enough to ensure a spam-free experience

Heftier issues such as user behavior and tone are sensitive and weren't intended to be part of the scope of moderation.  But with moderator power comes moderator responsibility.

We have now received two meaningful offers to be moderators from long-standing members of the community.  We will instantiate the moderator privileges and announce shortly.

[Owen Rubel]

I have run across where simply disagreeing with a moderator and posting a legitimate well thought out argument has zero bearing (ie wikipedia). Even if the person were seen as a jerk by 90%, they still deserve a fair shake and not an emotional response. Even judges fall victim to this (ie Brock Turner). 

I would rather fail on the side of allowing too much and be educated that allowing too little and miss out due to over moderation.

The ONLY thing that needs to be moderated is bigotry and incivility; if we can remain civil, avoid name calling and accept that text is not the best way to convey things (ie we may be misinterpreting emotion) then we can all get along.

Other than that, only the most egregious acts need to be banned.

On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 8:10:44 PM UTC-8, Sam Ramji wrote: