Mailman's moderation checkbox?! - Why are so many FreeBSD haters on this list? (Troll bait)

[Aryeh Friedman]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 2:27 PM Dave Hayes <dave at jetcafe.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 25 Apr 2020 13:33:21 -0500
> Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> > This will
> > not cover spreading of misinformation through well respected mail list
> > to my regret allowing itself to be abused. It will not cover people I
> > respect and routinely get help from from being abused by disrespectful
> > (to name it the mildest) person on this respected mail list.
>
> I personally find it quite difficult to glean complete information from
> moderated mailing lists. What usually happens is that the human bias of the
> moderator(s) prevents the dissemination of some information and the mailing
> list becomes useless except as a window to the worldviews and information
> the
> moderators deem worthy.
>

The other problem with any sort of moderation is my troll is your fine
upstanding list member and your troll is my "friend".   What I mean is
everyone who was calling me a troll (deserved or not) was defending someone
who arguably had even ruder behavior then I did.   For example while being
blunt I made a serious effort to never attack anyone personally.  "Only an
idiot" does not attack the person directly it is an attack on a
mindset/loosely defined group of people while one of the "cool kids"
(according to the reaction of a few other people) on the list made very
direct and personal attacks on me with comments like "you are not
qualified" (without without any attempt to specify I was not qualified in,
thus making it a blanket and deeply personally insulting comment).

Therefore if you going to label one person a troll based on behavior then
you need to (if you are intellectually honest) label all such behavior
trollish regardless of source.   This requires objectivity to an extremely
rare degree,  ant thus is very unlikely to be found in any single
person/moderator or small group thereof.   Also it would require a very
specific and detailed list of rules and behavioral expectations to give the
moderators a standard to judge by,
-- 
Aryeh M. Friedman, Lead Developer, http://www.PetiteCloud.org