Insight Into Harp-l Moderation

[John Concilus]

Hello,

This was posted to the main list, but I believe it is relevant to our discussion here because it gives insight into the kinds of issues that are either manually filtered by a human, or handled by settings in the Mailman moderation panel. 

Some of the most common issues involve a request to the list owner to make adjustments, but many times they require action on the sender's part. This is where running a list or helping with moderation is a mix of tech skill and "customer service".  

For example, with the first item in the "uncommon reasons" list I can see where some of a list owner's time goes.  Mail users frequently don't know if there is a naming mismatch between what their return address is and the "real" or gestalt address a mail server may use to identify itself via DNS records. The sender may, or may not have the skill to examine the settings on his or her mail client settings, or mx ''records for their sending mail server, so there is bound to be some measure of frustration on the user level that the moderator(s) have to address while trying to help them trouble shoot this issue. 

Note, also, the comparison of moderation of "meta" topics as act of a force of nature. This is similar to behavior management systems in schools or treatment facilities where rules are structured as commonly understood "non-negotiables" to reduce conversation (i.e. arguments) about specific, case-by-case decisions. It makes the external "force" of compliance something Immutable and non-negotiable. This takes the "enforcer" out of the equation, in a way, because those moderated (or disciplined) have only the "rules" to blame. This actually works with students and patients in terms of behavioral management.  It also makes for more efficiency in a situation like a mail discussion group, and I think may help some understand why the current moderator and list owner have used such an approach with Harp-l.

I think that this brief FAQ post to the main list is quite helpful to use as a lens for discussing the potential roles of both a list owner in setting Mailman's administrative controls, and in explaining to possible moderators what is involved.

Regards,

Johncn

From Harp-l:

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:13:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: owner-...@harp-l.org
Subject: [Harp-L] why isn't my post showing showing up?
To: har...@harp-l.org
Message-ID: <43540.70.162.20.193...@www.harp-l.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

Here are the common transient reasons.

1)  Multiple cc, carbon copy too many addresses and your post gets held
for review

2) blind carbon copy, generates a hold

3) verbose quotation, quote too many bytes of text and your post gets
held.  Why, to stop people from quoting digests to the list.  A really
common way to bump into this limit is to quote a longish post then send it
in html.

Common reasons your post isn't appearing that are more or less permanent.

1) you've let your account get spam botted.  Those accounts are all set to
moderation.  They won't ever get reset unless you ask.  Only one person
ever has done this.

2) you've sent a linked in invite to the list.  big no no, again your
account gets set to moderation.  Your posts will still appear but it might
take a bit.

3)  vacation auto responder.  You'll get set to nomail and moderated.
These people usually do ask to get this straightened out.

Uncommon reasons your posts aren't appearing right away.

1) you have an address mismatch, happens with forwarded mail.  One
character of difference is all it takes.  Sometimes a university account
will get moved to a different domain.  The mail still gets to you but you
won't be able to post.  We have a fix for that.

2) you are posting to the wrong address.  If you send to any other account
name other than harp-l it just disappears.  Well that's not really true it
goes to a deep dark place and I never ever read those e-mails.  I just
delete them globally on a system level about once a year.

3) you persist in posting meta to the list after you've been asked to
stop.  I won't ask you twice.  Your on topic posts will all appear.
Anything else will get bounced back to you.  It's not personal it's
gravity.  This is very rare but it happens.  Life is short, I don't want
to spend mine arguing with you.

All questions and or comments on this post should be directed to
owner-...@harp-l.org  Do not post replies to the list, thank you  Oh
and please don't post test post to the list.  Write me, I will help you
figure out what the problem is.  None of this is life and death and a
couple of hours in any one direction is no big deal.

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Richard Owen <richar...@gmail.com> wrote:

So we have two generous and humble candidates. Thank you. Might I suggest that the two of you talk off thread and decide which one of you will lead the transition. I suggest that we would benefit from a clear point person. Hopefully we will all rally around the new lead and get things sorted.

Will, John, let us know which one of you will run point during the transition. 

Richard