On 5/14/21 5:12 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/13/21 4:41 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/12/21 2:54 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
Maybe automated was the wrong word here, as a board we assumed that this was being tracked by the Heroes and they would remove people from moderation after there time period had expired, this wasn't always happening.
Simon, like I said -
1) it happens so rarely (less than once in five years), plus -
I have been on the board for just over 3 years now and while as a board we haven't often placed people under moderation
Perhaps you could elaborate and let us know exactly _how_ often ? I count only 1 (one) such occurrence) and I have been the mailing list manager since 2016 IIRC. In the ten-fifteen years prior to that, I see two life-time bans.
As I said in my previous email, probably on average several a year some years more some years less. Beyond mentioning something like "conflict resolution" in our minutes the board keep all the specifics of such matters confidential. The old mailing list software gave us very few options other then issuing warnings or bans so we had very few options in the past and have tended toward just giving out warnings, its also probable that we have banned people for 3 months and told them such but haven't enforced it programatically on the server. The new software gives us a range of extra features in this area including choosing to place certain people under moderation as a consequence of there actions gives the community alot more flexibility.
[1a] did the Board consult with the "moderators", to find out why they did not correctly end the moderation in question?
Yes we started those discussions and looking into it as soon as we were aware, it seems like moderators only have rights to moderate incoming messages and can't add or remove people. When the group was set up that was obviously the most important part.
I guess there is a reason why our secret gang of jolly moderators saw fit to _not_ bring this up right away, the very minute they determined they were unable to lift the moderation ? They could have asked Sasi or myself for assistance, right away.
As a board we didn't do a great job of formally outlining who was responsible for what here and whether the moderators are meant to be doing any more then approving posts from non list members and members under moderation at this point. As you can see from these minutes we still plan to discuss this further in an upcoming meeting.
[1b] I noticed no report on the progress of recruiting "moderators". [Is it secret or has there not been any progress?
There has been progress, however in certain timezones there is probably room for more progress.
Might we perhaps have a report on that progress? (or is it also secret?)
There has been some progress, when the board has finished discussing this issue we will be in a position to give even further progress.
[2] here I speak only for myself - the openSUSE Heroes is a group of volunteer sysadmins, primarily there to "scratch that itch". Dealing with the once-in-a-blue-moon moderation does not itch a lot.
Yes this is precisely why it makes sense to hand these functions of to a dedicated group.
Except there are so remotely few of these functions.
There are still a number of cases that take up significant amounts of board time and while some of these cases may still need to end up involving the board there are a significant number that could be dealt with quickly and simply by a moderation team.
One can only assume they had a need to develop one. I do not believe we have such a need on our mailing lists.
This is where you disagree with at least enough of the board that we feel it is worth discussing the topic in detail.
I certainly think the board should discuss it, but the board has already gone beyond that. The board has implemented secret measures, signed on incompetent so-called "moderators" without informing the community. Me thinks the idea has already failed miserably, and why on earth try perpetuate failure?
The board decided to trial some things and yes now we have seen what can work and where we still have the potential for improvements. But so far to me there has been nothing that has indiciated this has been a catastrophic failure that is worse then what we had before. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B