Proposal: Mailing List owner policy

[Albert Astals Cid]

El dijous, 23 de juliol de 2020, a les 23:49:23 CEST, Valorie Zimmerman va escriure:
> I had another thought hours after I sent my reply to Albert. What if we
> create a list for KDE listowners to which all listowners and mods are
> subscribed? That way we can approach issues as a team, share resources and
> problems, ask one another for coverage during planned absences, etc.
> 
> We had a list like this at Rootsweb, a free genealogy community, and it
> generally worked well. RW also used Mailman software before closing the
> lists recently. I've moved most of my former lists to Groups.io which is a
> splendid platform. I very much wish it was Free software!
> 
> It seems like a lits would be a more stable way to approach the issue than
> an annual inquiry email.
> 
> Thoughts?

I think a listowners list may be interesting to explore, but i don't see how it solves the "3 of the 4 list owners of okular-devel have gone away" problem.

We still need to ping them, don't we?

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> Valorie
> 
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 1:38 AM Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 4:55 PM Valorie Zimmerman
> > <valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 3:31 PM Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Dear Community,
> > >>
> > >> One important part of mailing lists being healthy is
> > owners/moderators[1].
> > >>
> > >> They moderate the lists, they help users that want to
> > subscribe/unsubscribe but don't know how to, they enact emergency
> > moderation in the very very seldom case that it is needed, etc.
> > >>
> > >> So to keep our mailing lists healthy we need to be sure to have healthy
> > list owners.
> > >>
> > >> In plural, more than one, because from time to time, we go on vacation
> > and the list duties still need taking care of.
> > >>
> > >> For that I'd like to enact this policy:
> > >>
> > >>     Mailing lists should have at least 2 active owners, ideally 3
> > [Obviously exceptions apply, like if we just started a mailing list to
> > coordinate translators for a language that has no translation in KDE yet,
> > we'd probably have no way to get 2 list owners]
> > >>
> > >> One keyword in that sentence is "active".
> > >>
> > >> Mailing list ownership/moderation un-activity is hard to detect.
> > >>
> > >> One way to potentially detect it, is by those summaries that sysadmin
> > sends periodically for lists with lots of mails to moderate, but that
> > doesn't cover all the cases.
> > >>
> > >> For example, it's possible that a mailing list has 2 owners and only
> > one of them is inactive, since the other one is keeping the list in working
> > condition we don't see it as a problem, but if that person goes on holiday,
> > then it suddenly is.
> > >>
> > >> For that I'd like to enact this policy sub-point:
> > >>
> > >>     Mailing list owners will be contacted every year asking if they are
> > still active and if they want to continue being list owner or if they'd
> > prefer we find a substitute.
> > >>
> > >> If they say "please find a substitute" or fail to answer in a given
> > time frame (I'd say a month is fair), they will be removed as owners and in
> > case the "at least 2 active owners, ideally 3" policy is broken we'll find
> > a new person.
> > >>
> > >> Does that sound something like we could agree on?
> > >
> > >
> > > I think this is a good idea.
> > >
> > >> Then the big question is "who will do this work?" Because it seems
> > quite a bit of work (albeit only once a year). I would suggest the
> > Community Working Group does this, as it's a way to keep our community
> > healthy, but i understand it's quite some work, so i volunteer to do it if
> > the CWG doesn't feel this is a task they want to take on.
> > >
> > >
> > > As a member of CWG, I think that this is a suitable task for us, and I'm
> > willing to do it. However, surely there is a master list of all the lists
> > and who the stated owners and mods are. If so, can't the sending be done
> > somewhat automatically? With the answers going to the CWG or whoever, to
> > find replacement people.
> > >
> >
> > You'd need a way of catching the exceptions - the people who don't reply
> > though.
> > Not sure how easy that would be to automate, but it's probably possible.
> >
> > In terms of getting a list of all lists, we can provide one of those
> > (it's attached). I'm not sure if Mailman provides anything out of the
> > box that lists who the owners of a list are though.
> >
> > >> Things I'm missing?
> > >
> > >
> > > Healthy lists are somewhat active. While a major protective duty of
> > owners and mods is to keep spam out and keep conversations moving in a
> > positive way, another is to keep the list active by bringing to it
> > appropriate topics of discussion. I don't want that forgotten. Too often
> > issues are discussed in IRC and never brought to the list where they ought
> > to be.
> > >
> > >> Improvement suggestions?
> > >>
> > >> Cheers,
> > >>   Albert
> > >>
> > >> [1] yes, i know they are not the same, but since one is a subset of the
> > other, let's pretend they are.
> > >
> > >
> > > I would like to hear from Sysadmin how many lists we have and how many
> > owners and if there is a way to automatically send an email to all owners
> > along with the names of the lists they administer.
> > >
> > > Valorie
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ben
> >
> > >
> > > --
> > > http://about.me/valoriez - pronouns: she/her
> > >
> > >
> >
> 
> 
>