Who maintains ruby-talk?

[Seebs]

Sorry, I do my email online, so used the wrong terminology. I just mean that
gmail will take 50 posts about ruids, and group them all together in a
single thread, so it doesn't spam my inbox. It also filters the threads out
and sets them in their own separate area, so they never touch my inbox at
all. If your _client_ didn't do this, I can see how the list could spam
your inbox.

You don't seem to understand.

It doesn't matter whether you *see* them. If they're sent, they're taking
up bandwidth for every single reader, and that is a significant cost.

Is email bandwidth even an issue these days?

Yes. It's a HUGE issue. Largely because about 96% of it is spam.

I stream all of my music, all
day. Pretty sure one minute of streaming music exceeds an entire month's
worth of emails (assuming no attachments).

Nope. More importantly, remember that the emails go to *every reader*.

-s

 

[Seebs]

As a poster and quite nonconformist I will always step on some folk's
toe. If there were a moderator I probably could not.

Why do you think this?

A decent list moderator is not going to freak out about the normal social
noise that makes a list a viable community. Good moderators don't do a
whole lot; they just clip the extreme edges and nudge people towards
courtesy, and the rest takes care of itself.

-s

 

[Intransition]

Well, a mailing list is a forum as well.

Also, please note this:http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/207947#905025

And there is the Google Group as well. Pretty much puts all the worry
about garbage in your inbox to rest.

Of course, if your heart is set on using your inbox, then the trick is
to black list people like thunk --of course then you'll miss it when
thunk actually says something useful... well maybe not, but you get
the point.

I setup the Google Group archive, and I can black list people at that
end if I want, I have never done so (expect obvious spam). I almost
did so for thunk however. But in the end I decided just to give it a
few days, and as usually the noise eventually died down.

 

[Josh Cheek]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

You don't seem to understand.

It doesn't matter whether you *see* them. If they're sent, they're taking
up bandwidth for every single reader, and that is a significant cost.

Okay, but if we're going to take that route, then a moderator stopping a
post removes it from every single reader's eyes. A moderator banning someone
means that everyone who didn't consider it spam or trolling or inappropriate
or whatever is affected. A moderator a little too happy about their power
affects every single person.

With this considering the net effect approach, I think the best argument
would be to weigh the cost of people having to deal with spam against the
cost of a moderator deciding what is spam and removing it, and the risk a
moderator presents, the likelihood of finding a moderator who can be trusted
and is reliable, and the avenues of moderation available, what can be done
if the moderator is unreasonable, and how to decide they are unreasonable
(of course, we are electing them to hide information from us, so would we
even know if they were being too heavy handed?).

If enough people think it is a worthwhile trade off then yeah, lets look
into it.

But at this point, people calling for moderation haven't even qualified
their complaints.

"rampant with security vulnerabilities, and in need of moderation."
"recent high volume of off-topic posts"
"gotten to an unusable space"
"high volume of off-topic email"

Not one person has given a single example. What are the issues? What if they
are talking about posts _you_ consider relevant, useful, important? There
have been several calls to explain

"I can't see any'off topic' threads"
"need to clarify specifically what their issue is"

But so far, we're just taking peoples word that what irritates them
irritates everyone and should be removed. Should we really be considering
taking action to solve a problem we haven't identified? How do we even know
a moderator will help? Maybe the moderator doesn't have an issue with
whatever posts are bothering these people. Then we've created
responsibilities and elected representatives to solve a problem that it
either doesn't solve, or that was localized to the people calling for
action.

If you want moderation, please explicitly lay out examples of issues you
have, and why you think a moderator would resolve these.

 

[Seebs]

Okay, but if we're going to take that route, then a moderator stopping a
post removes it from every single reader's eyes. A moderator banning someone
means that everyone who didn't consider it spam or trolling or inappropriate
or whatever is affected. A moderator a little too happy about their power
affects every single person.

That sounds like it would be a problem if it happened. I've been on a lot
of moderated lists, though, and it simply doesn't.

With this considering the net effect approach, I think the best argument
would be to weigh the cost of people having to deal with spam against the
cost of a moderator deciding what is spam and removing it, and the risk a
moderator presents, the likelihood of finding a moderator who can be trusted
and is reliable, and the avenues of moderation available, what can be done
if the moderator is unreasonable, and how to decide they are unreasonable
(of course, we are electing them to hide information from us, so would we
even know if they were being too heavy handed?).

Reality: The moderator probably does the same thing Usenet moderators do,
and it costs almost nothing and removes almost nothing.

Nearly any technical group is rich with reliable and trustworthy people.

Seriously, these are well solved problems.

-s

 

[Dylan Northrup]

A long time ago, (15.04.10), in a galaxy far, far away, Intransition wrote:

:=Of course, if your heart is set on using your inbox, then the trick is
:=to black list people like thunk --of course then you'll miss it when
:=thunk actually says something useful... well maybe not, but you get
:=the point.

And you'll get false negatives as well when people respond to him because
they aren't filtering. Centralized filtering reduces the chances that
someone else will respond in addition to reducing the overall bandwidth
usage of the list.

:=I setup the Google Group archive, and I can black list people at that
:=end if I want, I have never done so (expect obvious spam). I almost
:=did so for thunk however. But in the end I decided just to give it a
:=few days, and as usually the noise eventually died down.

I am currently taking a wait and see attitude as well. . . but if things
don't improve, unsubscribing is definitely an option.

 

[H- 16]

You know, just my two cents but I've been on several forum sites with
moderators.

All the things you're worried about, just plain doesn't exsist if you
have the right people as moderators. People who really care about the
site.

And it seems to me that you are thinking of only one mod. Why not have
more? Any mod who misuses his power can be brough back into line by the
others.

And if someone who is kicked shouldn't have been, one can always go back
and lift the ban.

There's no real harm in having a mod and there's lots to gain... just
look at thunk!

 

[Dylan Northrup]

A long time ago, (15.04.10), in a galaxy far, far away, Josh Cheek wrote:

:=But at this point, people calling for moderation haven't even qualified
:=their complaints.

Thunk is a jackass. His posts are about Ruids and ThunkGen do nothing to
improve the community or contribute to anyone's understanding of ruby, IMO.
If his posts and all responses that they generated (including this thread,
by the way) had not occurred, the ruby list would be no worse and, again
IMO, would be much better.

There, someone said it directly instead of talking around what everyone
who's been paying attention to the list already knows.

:=If you want moderation, please explicitly lay out examples of issues you
:=have, and why you think a moderator would resolve these.

Make Thunk's posts require moderation. Someone has to approve his posts.
If they contribute something worthwhile, the post is forwarded on. If
they're more of his inane "I'VE GOT AN AWESOME IDEA BUT I WON'T DISCUSS IT
WITH ANYONE UNLESS THEY SIGN AN NDA, BUT THEY REALLY NEED TO BECAUSE IT'S
AWESOME!@!!!" e-mails then they are sent to /dev/null. Overall traffic on
the list goes down, signal to noise ratio goes up and we can get back to
talking about things far more interesting than e-mail list moderation
policies.

 

[Justin Collins]

Yes, given the recent high volume of off-topic posts, I think it's clear the
list is in need of a moderator, at the very least someone who can warn/ban
users who make high volumes of off-topic posts.

I am not even sure moderation is a technical possibility. "ruby-talk" is
actually an amalgam of a Google user group, a forum, and a mailing list,
all of which are different systems run by different people.

Spam is handled decently already. If a thread is off-topic, the
community should be able to take care of it or ignore it, letting it die
a natural death.

-Justin

 

[James Britt]

I am not even sure moderation is a technical possibility. "ruby-talk" is
actually an amalgam of a Google user group, a forum, and a mailing list,
all of which are different systems run by different people.

Spam is handled decently already. If a thread is off-topic, the
community should be able to take care of it or ignore it, letting it die
a natural death.

Exactly correct.

My off-the-top-of-my recollection of annoying threads is that a good
deal of the longevity rests with people who continue to engage the
original poster.

If some proposed moderator is going to ban people responsible for junk
postings, will they also boot people who feed the trolls? They're
responsible for the noise problem as well.

Rather than try to change the behavior of trolls and such (you won't, so
don't bother), how about reserving that ire for the people who
encourage them?



--
James Britt

www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
www.neurogami.com - Smart application development

 

[Seebs]

Well you could do as I do and use a newsreader to read the messages. It
only downloads the headers and places them in threads which makes it
very fast to scan and determine what to read.

Actually, that's *precisely* what I do.

That said, I still don't really have any objections to some of the other
forms of this getting some moderation, given the apparent volume of
spam. (I'm lucky, my news provider filters most of the spam.)

-s

 

[Michael W Ryder]

You don't seem to understand.

It doesn't matter whether you *see* them. If they're sent, they're taking
up bandwidth for every single reader, and that is a significant cost.


Yes. It's a HUGE issue. Largely because about 96% of it is spam.


Nope. More importantly, remember that the emails go to *every reader*.

-s

Well you could do as I do and use a newsreader to read the messages. It
only downloads the headers and places them in threads which makes it
very fast to scan and determine what to read.

 

[Robert Klemme]

You know, just my two cents but I've been on several forum sites with
moderators.

All the things you're worried about, just plain doesn't exsist if you
have the right people as moderators. People who really care about the
site.

I prefer a situation where everybody in the community cares and feels
responsible.

And it seems to me that you are thinking of only one mod. Why not have
more? Any mod who misuses his power can be brough back into line by the
others.

Frankly, I do like the connotation of this: "misuse of power", "bring
back in line" etc. I don't think we need a government in here what
decides about what may be said and what not.

And if someone who is kicked shouldn't have been, one can always go back
and lift the ban.

There's no real harm in having a mod and there's lots to gain... just
look at thunk!

My stance is this: I do feel zero pain with regard to spam. I checked
my GMail account and there are 6 emails in the last 30 days that I have
or the spam filter has marked spam. I can easily ignore threads and the
bandwidth is only relevant for Google (btw, SMTP should make just one
copy of every mail to all GMail accounts subscribed travel the net).

Also, I do not consider recent traffic as spam: apparently there was
enough interest in the community to discuss this. So even with
moderation enabled these messages would have made it into everybody's
inboxes.

On the contrary, moderation not only slows things down but it also has a
different effect: the community delegates maintaining a healthy biotope
to moderators. I prefer the current solution where everybody is
responsible for balancing things out. I think it has worked out
remarkably well in the last years and I do not really see a major
degradation.

I haven't see a compelling reason why we should have moderation now. As
long as that has not changed I am strongly against moderation.

Kind regards

robert

 

[Seebs]

I believe you may underestimate the value of what we would be losing
with moderation.

Might be losing. Might not. Part of the point is that you think a bit
about what you WANT from moderation -- then you set things up to get it.

-s

 

[Robert Klemme]

I feel that you are unfair here, it might come as a surprise to some
but I am actually with Tony here. Kind of self protection, because in
a free list it is me who has to decide if someone is a troll, in
distress or not. Sometimes I also decide to make a joke because I
feel the list is just boring. If it were moderated I would not need to
make those decisions, in the first place and I would not see gross
language anymore neither.
Ok I agree that we will lose something, but maybe this something
should be elsewhere.

I believe you may underestimate the value of what we would be losing
with moderation. Delegating care for a community to a few
"professional" (in quotes because they won't be paid) caretakers does
have the potential to change the character of the community. I am
reading in other places as well and I am always amazed about the
kindness and openness of our community here. It may be even more
amazing that this happened without moderation. But it may actually be
the other way round: because we do not have moderation this is such a
friendly place (OK, obviously not all will agree with me here).

As a poster and quite nonconformist I will always step on some folk's
toe. If there were a moderator I probably could not.

That should make you wary of moderation, shouldn't it?

Kind regards

robert

 

[Tony Arcieri]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Perhaps I've missed something, I thought this was a reaction to Thunk, but
he only posts in a few threads.

Hi, yes, you got it right. I read ruby-talk via e-mail. Given my present
method of reading ruby-talk (via Gmail) it's been extremely distracting and
hindered my ability to read other mailing lists. I use Gmail's multiple
inbox feature to filter out mailing lists I'm subscribed to, and "high
traffic" threads get priority, even if it's the same person sending dozens
of messages to a single thread.

Perhaps the method by which you read ruby-talk differs, but given my present
mode of reading the list, thunk threads are eating up valuable second-inbox
space.

 

[Tony Arcieri]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I am not even sure moderation is a technical possibility. "ruby-talk" is
actually an amalgam of a Google user group, a forum, and a mailing list, all
of which are different systems run by different people.

As someone who has built a supersyndication system (in Ruby!), I completely
do not buy this argument. As far as I am aware, the MLM of
(e-mail address removed) is the central authority of the state of the mailing
list, and everything else is just syndication.

You're arguing that because ruby-talk is syndicated means it's
uncontrollable? Bullshit. Unless I'm confused the MLM is the central
authority.

And, oh by the way, as I referenced in the OP, the MLM is subject to some
pretty ridiculous security vulnerabilities. Anyone can unsubscribe anyone
from ruby-talk, so long as the read it via e-mail. That's silly.

 

[Tony Arcieri]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

My off-the-top-of-my recollection of annoying threads is that a good deal
of the longevity rests with people who continue to engage the original
poster.

This is precisely the case in which I feel a moderator should step in.
Relying on "the community" to police itself is silly.

Are you people really just a bunch of anarchists? I like moderation.

 

[Tony Arcieri]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

And, oh by the way, as I referenced in the OP, the MLM is subject to some
pretty ridiculous security vulnerabilities. Anyone can unsubscribe anyone
from ruby-talk, so long as the read it via e-mail. That's silly.

And as I realize code speaks louder than words, here you go. Here's some
Ruby code to unsubscribe someone from ruby-talk without their permission.
This particular snippet is set up to unsubscribe thunk from ruby-talk.
Feel free to modify it to unsubscribe whoever you like:

http://gist.github.com/365142

I send you this only to point out that ruby-talk is very much insecure,
especially for anyone who reads it via email.

 

[Seebs]

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty
than to those attending too small a degree of it.
--Thomas Jefferson

Non-sequitur. "Liberty" does not mean that anyone who wants can disrupt
anything, or harass anyone, they want. Decent moderation does not noticably
impair liberty.

More generally, a liberty which is useless has been effectively removed.

I find it rather curious that in the thread Tony starts, out of concern for
spammers and security holes, he posts 4 times in a row over the course of
ten minutes, and links to code that can be used to remove anyone from the
list.

Isn't he advocating an institution which, upon it's inception, would be
obligated to ban him?

No.

He's not spamming, and he's not posting malware. He's not doing things that
could reasonably be mistaken for those, either.

-s