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

[Alex Muntada]

svakSha:

> 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.

Why do ypu say that the nomail technical solution is not being
considered? That's not the case, people are raising concerns
about that solution being user-friendly enough.

The fact that the ubuntu-woman list is the contact address for
the ~ubuntu-woman team on LP is the source of all those mails
that can come from LP to the list whenever someone changes one
of the blueprints or wants to contact the team, even if they
don't know that the u-w list exists.

If those messages are discarded, that person will feel ignored
and thus will move on to another place instead of wasting time
trying to figure out what happened with their message or why
nobody replied.

So the real issue here is to balance the moderators wasting
time moderating or the non-members contacting the u-w list
wasting time figuring out what happens with their messages.
Both are valid concerns and both should be addressed in the
most friendly manner possible for users and moderators.

But, if there are people volunteering to be moderators and deal
with the burden of manually processing spam and approving valid
messages. What's the problem with that? Mailman has different
roles for admins and moderators, so i can't see why not.

> 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.

Automating isn't always the best solution, especially when there
is people involved. As a programmer you must already know that
sometimes there's a difference between what users really want
and what programmers undestood and actually did.

You're asking about evidence about how many messages have been
discarded, one way to achieve that is to send copies of discards
to moderators. There's no other way to know for sure otherwise.

> 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?

Any of the 347 members of ~ubuntu-women in LP can change the
blueprints at least (maybe even any LP member). Most of them
won't know about the u-w list and probably won't subscribe just
to have their messages to the list.

Maybe there should be a different list for the ~ubuntu-women
team on LP instead of using u-w list. LP can provide one
automatically, but i guess that the team admins preferred
to use u-w list instead to focus all conversations in one place.

> I've been asking for numbers but didnt get any.

You won't have any unless people complain about it instead of
moving on somewhere else. The only way to know for sure is
inspecting the logs (which i assume is not possible) or getting
copies of discarded messages.

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

Apologies were given and accepted, so that issue was already
settled. Can we move on to the technical issue?

> 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.

Being agile means listening to people and being able to accept
change, even if you feel that what they're asking is the wrong
thing to do. The first values from the agile manifesto say:
"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."

> 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.

You're asking to hear from people that don't even know that
this list exist or, even worse, people that are not members
of the list, so they cannot post their comments ;)

On the other hand, i also have a large experience with Mailman
(both as a sysadmin and moderator), so i can help setting up
the list to filter out tagged spam before it enters the queue.
Let's bring in some new moderators and try for a while to have
moderation queue enabled. One or two months should be enough,
right?

Cheers!
Alex