Proposal: Mailing List owner policy

[Valorie Zimmerman]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 3:28 PM Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:

> 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
>

True that. However at least we'll have all the listowners corralled,
keeping in mind that KDE is a very polite and orderly anarchist collective.
:-)

I have listowner privileges on quite a few KDE lists where things I don't
understand are being discussed. However, I can tell the difference between
a serious email to a devel list and spam, and using the cli application
"listadmin" I can sort the spam from the actual posts for lots of lists in
very little time. So a few of us doing that will remove most of the burden
from many others.

 If *all* of the listowners & mods are subbed to the new list, when they
leave I can write to them and find out why, so we would not have to wait a
year to put out the call for replacements.

Valorie

> 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
>
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