Bugzilla – Full Text Bug Listing
| Summary: | eclipse-dev should be moderated | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | Community | Reporter: | Rafael Chaves <eclipse> |
| Component: | MailingLists | Assignee: | Eclipse Webmaster <webmaster> |
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | normal | ||
| Priority: | P3 | CC: | Darin_Swanson, djo, ed.burnette, francois, gunnar, john.arthorne, pombredanne |
| Version: | unspecified | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | All | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
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Description
Rafael Chaves
I agree that some lists may have a high amount of noice, but I'm unsure of who would moderate the lists and who would approve new "unmoderated" users. Also, if I look at the eclipse-dev archives, around Apr 27/05, there is a thread that was initiated by Horst Heistermann entitled "Eclipse beginner threading question...". I feel Jared Burns offered what should have been the only reply to that e-mail, but several others have offered help. What incentive did Horst have in taking his question to the newsgroup when he was offered plenty of help from the mailing list? I don't suggest committers not help anyone, but I do think it's okay to gently point users towards the newsgroup for generic questions while *not* offer an answer on the mailing list. I was thinking about eclipse-dev only, because it is a special case. I don't see this problem happening with other lists. For some reason, every newbie chooses eclipse-dev as the place where to post newbie questions. User education does not work, and also it is an after-the-fact measure, the damage has already been done. Again, I don't know if this is even implementable, but moderators could be volunteer committers. The traffic of valid messages coming from new users should be really low anyway, and the delay of legitimate posts made by new users would be an one-time only annoyance. I don't mind making it moderated if: a) I get volunteers to moderate it. Unfortunately I currently don't have the resources to do so; b) we get community concensus that this is the right approach. I'll mention this issue in my next "webmaster update" e-mail so other members of the community can voice their opionion. Thanks for the suggestion! Thanks for listening. But I would like to stress that this would only be viable if users could be selectively moderated (is that possible?). Otherwise, the lag introduced by moderation would be an even worse problem for legitimate usage of the list. This sounds like a dup of bug 54024. Instead of it being moderated I think a better approach is to: a) help the new users find the right forum for their questions, and also b) provide a mailing list version of the user forum(s) for people who don't like or can't use newsgroups. Both of these ideas and others have been discussed with pros and cons before in bug 54024. +1 !! I agree eclipse-dev is currently almost useless for communicating important development information because of the high noise level. I would be happy to volunteer in some kind of rotating moderation of the list (I'm sure many commiters would be glad to help). I'm just thinking aloud, but a system where posts by commiters (from any Eclipse project) would go directly through, and other posts would be moderated would probably work well. The bounce message would gently point user questions to the appropriate forum. I agree with Denis that many people end up saying, "This isn't the right place, but here's the answer". With accurate responses appearing within minutes, you can't blame users for thinking it's a good place to get their questions answered. Feeding the pigeons doesn't get rid of them :) (In reply to comment #4) > But I would like to stress that this would only be viable > if users could be selectively moderated (is that possible?). Yes, this is possible. (In reply to comment #7) > (In reply to comment #4) > > But I would like to stress that this would only be viable > > if users could be selectively moderated (is that possible?). > > Yes, this is possible. mhm.. I assume it's possible to allow specific domains that will not be moderated? *.ibm.com *.eclipse.org ... Maybe it's time to get @eclipse.org email aliases for committers ;) *just kidding* I would appreciate a partial moderated eclipse-dev list. Committers should able to post without moderations. But there is still bug 54024. Just to voice my opinon, I think the suggestions for "light moderation" would be appropriate for users and developers, such as "any committer ok, once contributer ok'd always ok -- unless/until that privledge seems overused" . And, naturally, the 'bounces' should be encouraging and contain helpful pointers to newsgroups. (Sometimes, more than the noise, I'm put off by the (occasional) almost rude 'bounces' ... and I mean 'rude' only from a newbie's perspective tying to navigate the maze). Actually, I'm not bothered by the noise so much, but appreciate Rafeal's observation that it *prevents* developers from using it! That's the problem to be solved! And that part of the problem should receive high priority. (as well as improvements suggested in bug 54024). -1 on the idea of letting ibm.com and eclipse.org and a few select others have a free ride and blocking the others until approved. Imagine the PR on that one. I mean, really! I say, remove all links to the -dev links everywhere on eclipse.org except deep in the development pages. After 3.1 ships send all subscribers of all -dev lists a one time note explaining the situation and the purpose of the -dev lists and discouraging answers to user questions there. Then kick everybody off all the lists, requiring everyone who feels they still need to be on there to re-up (through a form that makes it clear what the purpose is again). A bit drastic, ok, but it treats everyone equally. Even then, I'm not sure it will be effective without providing user mailing lists for people who are unable or unwilling to use newsgroups. Most open source projects use mailing lists or bulletin board type systems for user forums, not private password protected newsgroups, so it's understandable people are looking for that when they first come to eclipse.org. Man, there have been a lot of OT emails lately. I'm not opposed to moderation, just the bit about allowing people based on their domain. I'm not sure moderation is the best approach but please do something. If you moderate and you want to prime the approved list with all current and future committers that would be ok. Adding Francois, he will be interested. I don't agree with allowing domains either (*maybe* in the eclipse.org case). Anyway, there should be an initial list of approved posters (committers, for example), otherwise moderation work at beginning would be hell. But no matter what the initial list is, it would then grow dynamically to include new posters, so one should not be too concerned whether one is part of the initial list or not. I agree with the moderation with a lot of approved posters idea. I believe there should be three categories of mailing list users: (1) moderators, (2) posters, (3) readers. One can automatically sign oneself up to be a reader; no moderator intervention required. Posters can post without moderation. A reader who posts gets held for moderation; the moderator then clicks the "promote this person to poster" button or the "send 'this is a newsgroup question'" button. Moderators thus have an easy load: all they have to do is consider new requests to be a poster. We could start with all the current committers as posters and the moderation load would be quite low. SO .. If I make eclipse-dev moderated, but unconditionally allow posts from Eclipse committers, would that be satisfactory? It's still unclear of who would actually invest time to moderate held e-mails, though. I would volunteer to be in the queue of moderators. (In reply to comment #16) > I would volunteer to be in the queue of moderators. However, my local time is UTC+2 :) > SO .. If I make eclipse-dev moderated, but unconditionally allow posts from > Eclipse committers, would that be satisfactory? That should be only the initial set of allowed posters. The moderation mechanism should make easy for moderators to permanently add others to the list of allowed posters. The idea is that after some time the rate of valid posts posted by not-yet-authorized posters should be near zero. > It's still unclear of who would actually invest time to moderate held e-mails, > though. If what I suggest above can be implemented, I believe many would be willing to help (count me in). (In reply to comment #18) > If what I suggest above can be implemented, I believe many would be willing to > help (count me in). AFAIK mailman does support this out-of-the-box. The only limit is that all moderators must share one moderation password. I like Bjorn idea, and it would be very easy to implement with mailman with the mod flag on all users that are not committers... BUT you SHOULD also include folks which are already subscribers, and while not committers -like me- are not trolling the lists with OT posts, at least I hope :-) A good starting point could be folks who have submitted a few bona-fide bugs which were fixed with more than a "works for me". A few query on your bugzilla should help for that. You could that way establish a baseline of "reputable" participants. The hard part will be to be reasonably inclusive, and not piss too many people off. You have to be careful, since some committers are note easy to spot, as they may use multiple addresses, like a business and a personal email at the same time, or an meial to keep their own select archives of posts. For instance the email address I use for mailing lists subscriptions is not the same as the one I use for bugs... And I am not a committer. So I would still be excluded under the criteria I suggest, and unless turnaround for removing the moderated flag is fast, I will be pissed. :-( Once that is done, every new subscriber should have its mod flag set on by default, and all the descriptions of the mailing list should be updated properly so folks understand what is happening. And welcome, moderation and bounce emails when a posting or subscription is held should be very explicit, and contain links to the corresponding newsgroup, and explain what is the detailed procedure to get approved as poster, in case the subscriber is a new committer or else. The admins of a list should be also able to change the settings if needed (i.e. AspectJ-users may want to work differently) So quite a bit of setup work is required from list owners to do it right, and I am not sure that this will work with everybody's workload, but it's worth giving it a try. You could also play with mailman's news gateway, to forward (one way) the lists posts to the newsgroups. And a few mailman hacks to assist forwarding a moderated post directly to the newsgroup, and later the poster would make it so much better. Denis, could you come with some scenario and tests them before making any changes? That would be real nice! All in all, my 2cents: this is important stuff, but non-trivial to setup properly, and a very easy way to piss-off many folks fast! So be it. Let's give it a try. As soon as I get at least three committers who volunteer to be moderators, I'll enable moderation on eclipse-dev. Please e-mail me from your committer e-mail account. I will send you the password and access instructions. Everyone's moderation flag will then be set, except for current Eclipse committers. For now I'll only accept Eclipse committers as possible moderators. Moderators can "Clear this member's moderate flag" if they deem a poster shouldn't be moderated. D. If the experience is limilted to eclipse-dev for now, I have no objections. Even if I am being squeezed out short term. This is now in place, and a message has been sent to eclipse-dev announcing its status as a moderated list. If you are an Eclipse committer, your messages should not be moderated. If they inadvertently are, the list moderators will clear your moderation flag. Closing as fixed. I haven't seen a single message to eclipse-dev since it was moderated (5 days ago). Before that I was seeing 5 or more a day. What's going on? Does that just mean the moderation is working and all messages are being turned away because they are user or plug-in development questions? I've seen a number of messages on other lists such as platform-dev, platform-swt-dev, platform-core-dev, platform-debug-dev, platform-ui-dev, pde-dev, and jdt-ui-dev. Perhaps the users have just moved to the other -dev lists. There has been only one attempt to post that needed to be moderated and that appeared to be a mistake from webmaster@eclipse.org :-) The webmaster message sent right after moderation was in place was approved by a moderator. Personally, I have rejected a couple of messages from newbies (redirected them to the newsgroups, and saw at least one of them posting there) and haven't seen any valid message so far. So I believe it is working fine. If you look at eclipse-dev before moderation started, it should not be hard to see long periods where not a single valid message was posted. Maybe is the same thing Darin mentions, but I have seen bogus messages apparently from the webmaster (sender address probably spoofed) that contained binary attachments. (In reply to comment #25) > There has been only one attempt to post that needed to be moderated and that > appeared to be a mistake from webmaster@eclipse.org :-) Wasn't a mistake, someone was impersonating me. You should see how many e-mails I get from webmaster@eclipse.org claiming my account with eclipse.org will soon be terminated unless I follow the instructions in the attached .zip file. I quickly rejected the impersonating post in case one of you moderators would have thought it was authentic. Ed: I am boggled by your rationale in saying "Man, there have been a lot of OT emails lately" one week and then come back the next week with "I haven't seen a single message to eclipse-dev since it was moderated (5 days ago). Before that I was seeing 5 or more a day. What's going on?". I'd say we have achieved success. Perhaps the committers have long stopped using the eclipse-dev list for meaningful posts because it was rendered useless to them. > I am boggled by your rationale
I guess I just didn't realize the S/N ratio was not only low, but it had in fact
reached 0. Hopefully it will come back up. If this is successful, is the plan to
do the same for the other -dev lists?
(In reply to comment #28) > If this is successful, is the plan to > do the same for the other -dev lists? Well, it's certainly an option, but I won't make it a default. If after a few weeks it is determined that eclipse-dev moderation is a bigger plus than it is a minus, I will offer this option to Eclipse committers for any -dev list in my next "webmaster update". I guess I'd need at least 2 volunteer committers per list for moderation. |