[wp-hackers] Future of wp-hackers

[Jennifer Hodgdon]

Chris Williams wrote:
> Same goes here.  Just stop noise early.  And it's the community's
> responsibility.  When a thread goes off-target, when the horse has been
> beaten to death, anyone should feel free to guide it elsewhere.

I am not sure that would work... I belong to exactly one high-traffic 
list that manages to stay on target. There are a few factors that make 
it work:

a) Rather than community policing, there a few designated moderators 
(benevolent dictators) who "fling a wet noodle" when anything gets out 
of hand, and say the thread must stop. If someone else wants a thread 
stopped, they can ask a moderator to do it. People generally respect 
this and stop discussing the thread.

b) There are very strict list guidelines regarding what can and can't 
be discussed, which are written down, and a link to the list 
guidelines is at the bottom of each post.

c) In order to get a post through the mailing list software, one of 
the designated subject indicators must be in the subject line. For 
example, for the Hackers list, you could have subject lines like
    (plugin) Proposed plugin for better tag editing
    (core) Better tag editing needed in core of WP
etc. There are only 7 approved subject indicators in the other list 
I'm on. Posts that don't fit in one of those subject areas are outside 
the list. Also, people can subscribed to only a subset of the subject 
areas if desired.

d) There is a separate list called "NWR" (not web related -- this 
particular list is for discussion of web-related topics) for people 
who want to participate in off-topic discussions with like-minded people.

I think something like this could work on wp-hackers, and would 
improve the list greatly. It would take a little work to write the 
list guidelines, but I think the list software on wp-hackers already 
supports topical subject header filtering.

     --Jennifer

-- 
Jennifer Hodgdon

Poplar ProductivityWare * www.poplarware.com
Web Databases/Scripts * Modeling/Analysis/Palm OS Software