Improving the list climate [was Re: Fwd: Fedora Weekly News 228]

[Steve]

On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:28:20 +0100, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote:

> On 06/03/2010 11:11 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>> How do we fix this?
>> - moderation?
>> - a code of conduct?
>> - ?
>>
>> I've found some of the behavior of a few on this list to be quite
>> embarrassing. To me, it seems an alien island in the middle of the
>> Fedora community that I know to be a genuinely warm, friendly, and
>> welcoming place.
>>
>> Do we want new users to witness this kind of behavior? They are directed
>> towards this list right now via a number of different pointers. My team
>> is planning to redesign the Fedora website for Fedora 14, and I'm not
>> sure we can in good conscience continue to point new users to this list
>> [1].
>>
>> Does anyone have any ideas on how to improve this situation? We've had a
>> small few but notable trolls in the past 6 years on the Fedora
>> art/design lists, and the one solution that seemed to work best was
>> placing badly-behaving folks on moderation for a few weeks. I don't know
>> if that would be the appropriate solution here, though. For example, do
>> we have anyone willing to take on the responsibility of moderating?
>>
> I think that we should welcome new users, and at the same time, rather
> than chastising them because they top post or hijack threads, send them
> an email offline politely mentioning their break of protocol. Maybe we
> should email them a small subset of the FAQs. We want people to join the
> Fedora community not be driven from it. We should always remember my
> 80-20 rule that 20% of everyone is a jerk. There are going to be jerks
> on every list, and there are going to be good citizens who occasionally
> behave as a jerk. The bottom line is that many come to this list for
> help, and we have a great community of people who are able to give good
> technical help.
>
One problem with the off-list email, who sends it?  This was tried on a  
list I was on years ago and resulted in everybody sending an email to the  
miscreant.  I think just politely pointing out the misdeed and then  
answering the query is the best way.

-- 
Steve