Oxygenating the flame in threads was Re: [extropy-chat] a futurist prediction

[BillK]

On 8/26/05, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> A way would be to patch Mailman to attach voting URLs at the bottom of
> each message with
> unique tracking ID for each user and message, and a table
> to keep scores user vs. user, and a settable score threshold
> (zero=no filtering) a poster needs to be over in the table
> for messages to come through.
> 

Over the years, I don't remember extropy-chat having a programmer
available to start patching Mailman, and doing all the testing,
debugging, conversions, etc. that would be required.

But I don't think this would work anyway. The majority on any list are
non-participants. They read (sometimes) the mail and delete it or file
it. That's all. They won't start scoring posts up or down. The scoring
would only be done by the 20 or 30 keen members. And they would have
different opinions and would all have varying amounts of time
available. So an assortment of posts would be scored by a small number
of people of differing opinions. Might as well have a random number
generator.

If we have a few keen members, why not make them list administrators
and use the existing Mailman procedures?

The present list moderation is done on a casual, after-the-event
basis. When threads are over 50 messages long, smoke and flames are
drifting over the battlefield and the field hospital is full of
casualties, then the moderator will appear and tell everyone that they
have been naughty boys and if they don't stop it, he will take their
toys away.

Fine, but all the violent tirades are already in the archives for
googling journalists to find and quote back at us.

Mailman has rules for messages to be put in the 'held' queue. By email
address and/or keyword filters. Moderators are notified and they can
either reject or accept each message. If we have enough moderators and
the rules are loose enough that only an occasional message is held, it
would not be too much of a burden on them. The rules can be gradually
tightened up if too much rubbish still gets through to the list.

List moderation is not a new discovery. The best brains on the web
have been talking about it and trying different options for many
years. But ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

BillK