[LA-Policies] [Fwd: Re: [Linux-aus] New Mailing List policy now in effect]

[Russell Stuart]

Forwarding as suggested by LA secretary.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Russell Stuart <russell-linuxaus at stuart.id.au>
To: Linux Australia Secretary <secretary at linux.org.au>
Cc: linux-aus <linux-aus at linux.org.au>
Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] New Mailing List policy now in effect
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 08:54:28 +1000

On Wed, 2014-10-22 at 21:11 +1100, Linux Australia Secretary wrote:
> As you may have read in Council Minutes over the last few months, we 
> have been working on a Mailing List policy. The intent of the policy is 
> to foster open dialogue and discussion on relevant forums, while 
> providing a safe space free from undesired behaviours such as personal 
> attack and 'flaming'. The draft policy has now been reviewed on the 
> policies mailing list [1]. Council recently approved the draft Mailing 
> List policy, and it is subsequently in effect.
> 
> Please take a few moments to familiarise yourself with the policy;
> https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/blob/master/mail-list-policy.txt

One question - the document references footnotes, but I don't see them?
Surely it isn't complete without them.

I should have followed this on policy@ and made my comments there, but
3.d.iv. seems like it could lead to trouble.  Strong criticism on topic
is easy to interpret as "intended to divide", particularly if the
community is polarised on the matter.  There is nothing wrong with what
it is trying to achieve of course, but the problem is it could easily
lead to meta discussions on who was intending what, and those meta
discussions could end up being characterised as an "intent to divide".
Anyone who has watched debian-devel over the past month or so can see
what happens when you create the conditions allowing such meta
discussions to feed off each other.

Explicitly granting another power to the mod's would have a similar
effect - the right to shut down a thread or topic if they feel it is
detrimental to the list, and ban similar threads for a while.  Breaking
the ban is then grounds for being thrown off the list.  (It's odd you
didn't include it, as the current LA exec has done just that on
linux-aus on a couple of occasions recently, to good effect.)

And having just witnessed debian-devel going seriously awry there is
something missing from 3.d - "stay on topic".