[arch-general] offtopic ml (WAS eons ago: Re: change in mount behaviour?)

[C Anthony Risinger]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Heiko Baums <lists at baums-on-web.de> wrote:
>
> This wouldn't change much. The original topic was Arch related. The
> discussion about PA etc. evolved from this. So such a discussion
> wouldn't be switched to another mailing list. Same for any other
> similar discussions. See my try to change the subject from mount to PA.
> The discussion about PA has mostly been continued under the original
> subject.

in the forums threads can be locked and what not -- there simply needs
to be more aggressive enforcement/definition of the expected lines of
conversation.  if the description is too vague, clarify it.  it people
misstep, inform them.  if they continue, warn them.  if they refuse,
temp ban them.  if they chronically disregard everyone's time and
patience, perma-boot them.  no different than IRC or any other medium.

> And there's another disadvantage. This arch-offtopic list would most
> likely not read by so many people and probably not by the "right"
> people whatever that might mean.

yeah?  arch-general already has plenty of the "right" people missing.
this gets said all the time "you need to raise bugreport, no one
here".  i've seen plenty of "well, i'm done with this list" by such
people.  this point is a noop imo, because if you want action you have
to channel it appropriately, not sound off again and again hoping for
*someone else* to pick up the slack.

a really famous guy once said "be the change you wish to see [...]".
make a conscious effort to understand why things are not working as
you believe they should.  respect the goals of the developers you are
conflicted with.  communicate clearly/respectably/persistently to make
yourself known.  recognize that you may be misinformed or flat out
wrong in your understandings.  find the solution. find a workaround.
find an alternative. move forward.

... anything else causes no real work, only the constant energy
expenditure of competing forces [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_%28physics%29 ]

> A new mailing-list arch-offtopic would only be used for discussions
> which are originally be totally offtopic. And probably not even then,
> if someone isn't aware that his topic is offtopic.

nah, just like in IRC ...

"#arch-offtopic please."

> So if such a discussion would indeed be moved to an arch-offtopic list
> this would mean people can directly shut their mouth. So almost no
> chance for changes.

sure that's a possibility, but far less probable because it's the
equivalent of a brick wall.  some refuse to use more general medium
like forums etc, and while i can respect that, this isn't a newsgroup
system with thousands of channels.  this is a specific mailing list
that people join for a highly related reasons.  /methinks if you rant
on a newsgroup they too will quickly tell you to beat it.

an alternative list *creates* an *appropriate* channel to *refer* them
too vs. slamming the door in the face and wondering why they keep
chattering on the porch.

> People who are not interested in a thread can either ignore this
> thread, just filter it out or move its e-mails to /dev/null with their
> e-mail clients.

not always, and i use a mobile 70%+ of the time.  i don't want to
create a new filter for every long-winded thread to nowhere.  maybe i
can create a label -> trash, and flag multiple conversations ... maybe
i can't.  why should i?

... you know what's way cooler? believing others are capable of
respecting each other's time, and the reason others join a list in the
first place (ie. the expected boundaries).

another alternative is to move away from mailman oldness, and use
something like lamson/librelist, which can spawn lists on the fly in a
democratic way.  then people can talk about whatever they want 'till
blue in the face.  with a small amount of work we could enable the
community to moderate it too, with a command system similar to
majordomo (i use this setup now, straightforward to add).  but, as it
stands, i'm not going to go out of my way to quash the
inconsiderations of others, because it's even simpler to unsubscribe.

-- 

C Anthony