[UbuntuWomen] Non-members posting! [was] Re: Fwd: [Blueprint community-1311-ubuntu-women] Ubuntu Women Trusty Goals

[svakSha]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 1:01 PM, Alex Muntada <alexm at alexm.org> wrote:
> Let me make a quick summary of the technical details regarding
> this debate so far...

Thank you for that excellent Agile perspective. My friends who use it
cant recommend it enough, but I digress...

> The issue comes from:
>
>  a. ubuntu-women list seems to have a discard non-member post
>     policy, as far as i can tell;
>  b. ~ubuntu-women team on LP has 347 members;
>  c. some of them are not subscribed to ubuntu-women list or
>     use different e-mail addresses on LP and the list;
>  d. when those people change any blueprint in ~ubuntu-women,
>     the message sent to ubuntu-women list gets discarded;
> These solutions have been proposed:
>
>  S1. enable the moderation queue instead of discarding non-member
>      posts on ubuntu-women list and bring more volunteers to help
>      with moderation if needed;
>  S2. keep the discard non-member posts policy and encourage people
>      to subscribe to ubuntu-women list with NOMAIL option;
>  S3. add verified non-member addresses to accept_these_non_members
>      option in ubuntu-women list setup;
>
> These concerns have been raised:
>
>   C1. S1 would bring to much spam to the queue;

Not just spam, but I would be asking women to volunteer their time on
a problem that has a technical solution which is not even being
considered, hence disrespectful of their time and efforts. That said,
as a programmer we are constantly trying to automate and find
solutions, so I find it surprising when people dont want to use either
of the two technical options and features when it exists. Hence, the
arguments for the manual method surprise the nerd in me.


>   C2. in S2, blueprint contributors may not know about ubuntu-women
>       list or may not know/want to subscribe to it, even with NOMAIL;

If they dont know about UW, why would they be interested in
participating or emailing us? And, how many such blueprint
contributors exist and face a problem with posting here? I've been
asking for numbers but didnt get any. Mailman has a solution for LP
members not interested in NOMAIL - I can whitelist id's but to do that
I need the individual to give me their permission (read, a list of all
the alternate email id's they use). Many LP users keep their email id
private and there is no way to help them unless they ask for help. I
am open to adding each of those 347 LP members if they want to use
multiple email ID's but this is their choice to make. Read, if they
come forward and tell the admins which email ID to add, I can
whitelist all of them. Fwiw, the number of people whitelisted in the
last decade of this list's existence has been just 4 individuals.




> The issue here is to find the right balance between C1 and C2.

The fact that this thread arose from one persons false assumptions and
extrapolated thereafter cannot be ignored, hence a moot point.


> An approach that agile methologies suggest in cases like this,
> when there's no win-win situation, is to try for a short while
> the opposite that's currently being done and see how it works.

Trust me, the opposite (allowing non-subscribers to post) was tried
when we started out (circa 2006) and it was a mess pretty soon. Back
then we were less well-known, and yet were incessantly spammed every
day and that is true for every Ubuntu list. Today the number would be
higher. Asking folks to sub (or whitelisting those who didnt want to)
reduced this problem by almost 99%.

Fwiw, I have been a part of Agile teams and our approach was to not
ignore problems (read, potential bugs) that arose out of real usecases
which are based on past experience and since spam bots are an even
bigger problem today, I'm interested in hearing thoughts on this from
a technical perspective, without which it would not be prudent to
agilely (sorry for the bad pun :)) change the list settings. If hasty
decisions and permanent changes will impact more people on this list,
it cannot be ignored.

As a programmer, my goal is to find and nuke bugs and/or fix things
that are broken. So when I'm asked to do the opposite, read, create a
larger bug based on false assumptions, I am confused. Extrapolating on
that false assumption means we are creating a problem where none
exists, and none of the LP members have mentioned they have a problem
posting here. I actually want to hear from LP members who have a
problem and if I cannot help them, I am open to experimenting with
(temporarily) allowing non-subscribers to post. But I want to hear
from LP users directly.

Best, ॥ svaksha ॥ http://svaksha.com