On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Erik Mitchell <erik.mitchell at gmail.com>wrote: > It's not really doing much harm, in my opinion, and to the extent that > it is, I think a person who is a moderator could email someone > off-list and ask them to stop, and if they don't, then ban them from > the list, or take away privileges, or whatever. > It's about respect - both of the individuals on this list and the purpose of the list itself. No one likes being preached at, and especially not within the context of technical conversation. There are indeed places where preaching/ranting/whatever are appropriate. Technical mailing lists are not one of those places. Agreed, though, I would be perfectly happy if a mod would reach out to people personally - that's exactly what should happen. We just haven't heard anything, which communicates implicitly that off-topic, divisive behavior is tolerated. > I'd prefer to err on the side of inclusion. This isn't an IEEE mailing > list, it's a LUG mailing list. A small one at that, for a group that > hardly ever meets, and when it does, it meets for beer. I'm actually > less annoyed by trolling than I am at seeing experienced interneters > feeding the trolls*, and then getting mad that their inbox is being > flooded with nonsense. > I think we're all perfectly capable of ignoring trolls. It's an essential skill. That doesn't mean that trolling is an acceptable behavior, or that which should be allowed. I've been in far too many communities, technical and otherwise, where off-topic, disrespectful behavior was tolerated and in *every* instance, the community disintegrated. I don't want that for TCLUG. I want to attract *more* people here, but with the current drama level, no one in their right mind is going to sign up to be preached at regularly. There are plenty of other well-run mailing lists, forums, etc. where they can go. I was actually somewhat saddened while talking to people at the AWS re:Invent conference a few weeks ago. I would mention that I'm from the Twin Cities, and they'd ask how the technical community is in this area. I explained that we have a *lot* of technical folks here, both on the software development side as well as the sysadmin/operations side, but that the opportunities to gather and exchange ideas are few and far between. I would absolutely *love* to see TCLUG (and other local groups like it) flourish. One key thing that will help this happen is indeed to cut out (as much as possible) discussion and/or members that will alienate people. Cripes, perhaps I'm one of those, and if so then so be it. I'd hope that's not the case, though. > Perhaps enough of us care that we should reassign responsibilities to > people who might be interested in more active leadership? Should we > have a new group of moderators? Should we elect a new > president/supreme ruler? > +1. I'd at least like to hear who is on the mod list currently. If those people are not actively involved on the list, then things should be switched up. -Erik -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20131125/22fcf994/attachment-0001.html>