Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Will Briggs <will@burnieanglican.org.au>]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 13:14 +1000, Will Briggs wrote:
>> Oh dear.  "slight delay" in an email list forum?  That's like saying
>> "you can take part in this face-to-face conversation but you have to
>> wait 30 seconds before you can say anything"  In effect you reduce that
>> person to an on-looker who can throw in the occassional comment.  The
>> comments themselves are reduced in their relevance or impact because by
>> the time they are heard, the conversation has moved on.
> 
> On a mailing list?
> 
> We're not talking IRC here.  We're talking mailing lists.
> 
> I can take a nap, a full 8 hour sleep, or many times even take the
> WEEKEND OFF FROM GENTOO and still manage to come back and give useful
> input.  Email isn't exactly instant and nobody who runs a mail server
> will even pretend that it is.  Adding a, say, 3 hour delay between
> posting and the timeout, doesn't seem to me like it would affect much of
> anything.  After all, I managed to not touch my email since Friday and I
> am still managing to participate in this conversation.
> 

1) The smaller the moderation time, the smaller the benefit of having
moderation at all.  The greater the moderation time, the greater the
"penalty" for not being one of the "in crowd."   3 hours is an
interesting figure to consider in this light and I would love to see
some justification as to why that is the "sweet spot" (if, in fact, a
sweet spot exists)

2) I agree - I too sleep between reading gentoo-dev.  But the difference
is that you are talking about a delay in reading the list (like, for,
yeah, sleep).  The proposal, however, is a delay between between your
awareness of the current state of the conversation (and your writing of
a reply), and the actual distribution of your reply.

So, for instance: someone asks a (technical) question, no-one has
replied, so I reply.  $moderation_delay later my answer is distributed,
but in the mean time n other people have answered.  I (or they depending
on whether they were moderated as well) look like an idiot, and the end
result is more noise on the list, not less.

And you can throw in a whole other bunch of the sorts of thing that can
happen in the delay between reading & writing, and the actual
distribution of the email --> clarifications, retractions (Don't worry
I've solved it emails), solutions, and even warnings from people that
the thread is off-topic!

This is only compounded when the thread needs a bit of "to and fro" (the
"when you said X, did you mean X+Z?" type email).

Email being what it is there are always posts that "pass in the night"
and double-ups and delays.  These, while minimal, are one of email's
inherent frustrations.  The proposal simply amplifies that frustration.

Moderation delay is not the same thing as having a sleep between
readings of the list.

W.
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