+1 what Mike said.
If you can't say something nice, say it privately, not on the list. If
you don't like the post, delete it and ignore the sender. If you keep
rehashing it like this, all it does is piss off everybody who still
hasn't left the list. All comes back to DON'T FEED THE TROLLS. If the
original message was innocent, either a civil reply or ignoring it
will make the problem go away. Let it die.

+1 TRIM YOUR POSTS.
It is bad enough having 20 people jump in with excited & upset
comments. It is infinitely worse when they add their reply on top of
someone else's reply and can't be bothered to trim the last 10 replies
off the bottom of their post. I didn't care to read outraged reactions
the first time and I don't need to see it again and again and again in
steadily lengthening replies.  Just pretend you have to print the
messages to read them.....

Overall I don't think the list needs active moderators, unless perhaps
to chastise people who start getting nasty and making personal remarks
in reply to what is probably a comment that came out wrong. I'm pretty
sure that EVERYONE can think of a time they said something that
another person took as a personal attack. It is even easier to
mis-understand email since the other person can't see your face or
hear your voice to know the intent of the remark. If you don't have a
thick hide, you probably don't belong on the Internet. Trying to add
enough context and background to make my meaning clear is why my
emails are more often counted in pages than in paragraphs.

Doug Reed.
Lurking in N St Paul.

On 4/1/14, tclug-list-request at mn-linux.org
<tclug-list-request at mn-linux.org> wrote:
> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 12:30:16 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com>
> To: TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org>
> Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Email list moderation inquiry
>
> My opinion is that the list is usually not too badly affected by the
> occasional weird or offensive post.  The thing that really messes us up is
> the much larger number of posts about those posts.  (That would include
> this thread on moderation and, ironically, this message!)
>
> The more we *ignore* that kind of thing, the better off we are.  Another
> good plan is to write to the offending individual directly without cc'ing
> to the list.  That way he or she may receive many more messages about the
> problematic posting and it won't clutter the list.  If you post to the
> list, then many people will feel like it's been taken care of and they
> don't need to send a message.
>
> When a thread gets hijacked into a battle over netiquette or similar
> non-Linux issues, we all lose.  If one person says annoying things, I can
> block that person or disregard him, but if 20 people send replies to that
> person, then I see all their crap and it's harder to deal with it.
>
> Mike