[Air-l] Re: Learning from Lachlan
Bram Dov Abramson
bda at bazu.org
Thu Mar 21 11:15:46 PST 2002
<radhika at cyberdiva.org>:
>golly - looks like I've missed some real fun stuff (I think I got derailed
>because of a bouncing account).
>
>and who decides this "broad range" might i ask?
The list manager(s). To whom it is up to try and implement whatever
collaborative decision-making processes they feel is appropriate, works
well, etc. And at which they can even do a great job.
List managing is, as you know, an artful process. Deciding to abdicate all
list management responsibility to the listserver software is one kind of
decision, in which case list operations very much depend on how the
software was designed. Generally I think that list management is a
combined human-machine task: some tasks you automate inside the machine
(software design), some you maintain a set of human procedures for, some
you have human moderators deal with on the fly and invent ad-hoc ways of
dealing with.
Sometimes on this list we've talked about altering machine procedures, like
rejecting all messages in which more than half of lines begin with a caret,
implementing kill-files inside digests (well, that was me), etc. Sometimes
on this list we've talked about altering human procedures, like drawing up
codes of conduct, excluding trolls, etc. Just where on the human-machine
spectrum each list's management falls is, clearly, up to the list
managers. Learning, teaching, researching about how to improve, fine-tune,
recalibrate that process to achieve desired outcomes is surely a kind of
Internet research.
cheers
Bram
ps on trolls: Guillaume Latzko-Toth, who I think is still on this list,
gave an interesting paper at the Lawrence Kansas AIR which (iirc) talked
about the rise of software-agent trolls inside IRC, much more sophisticated
than the USENET agent-trolls which I think still roam to and fro. A really
neat topic for research: what happens when human and non-human trolls
interact, I wonder? Do they?
pps: This time I forgot to cut out the quoted digest before sending,
ironically. While it may be harder to implement new list management ideas
than turn on already-existing ones, some of the already-existing ones seem
to work just fine:
>Subject: Request to mailing list Air-l rejected
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>Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 13:16:01 -0500 (EST)
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