3 ms·

Thank you for your perspective and sorry for the silly question: can't stupid people be booted from a mailing list? I assume well-intentioned spammers to get ar

by sph 3y ago

Thank you for your perspective and sorry for the silly question: can't stupid people be booted from a mailing list? I assume well-intentioned spammers to get around any ban, but I imagine an invite-only mailing list can be told to drop everything sent or received from a particular email, no? My naive hope is that a mailing list with 10 strangers will not devolve into utter chaos immediately. It might fade into irrelevance, sure, but that is just how entropy works.

igor47 3y ago
yes, a community can be cultivated. it's okay okay if it's just a moment in time and is meaningful for some and then people move on, it's also okay/wonderful if it takes off and becomes a haven of sanity and togetherness. i'm sorry if i came off as too jaded, i don't mean to dissuade you from trying, and i'm glad you're thinking about it! feel free to ping me if you want more technical tips, or if you want to use my mailman instance instead of trying to shave that particular hairy yak.
- sph 3y ago
  Maybe if you have an easily-accessible list of best practices to run mailman, I'd love to know. I won't lie to you, hearing you talk about DMARC and SPF makes my hair raise already, I hate dealing with SMTP, and I hoped it would be possible to set Mailman up leveraging third-party platforms (i.e. Postmark, Mailgun, etc.) so I wouldn't have to deal with that nonsense.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
> can't stupid people be booted from a mailing list? Of course. If you're the BOFH of the whole thing, you don't even need to get anyone else's approval. But if you do want the community to weigh in on who's "stupid" and who's not, then suddenly you might discover that three out of your ten members actually think that the person in question is a genius and is holding the whole thing together. Four members might think that booting anyone out at all runs counter to the purpose of your mailing list. Two people will privately email you and the "stupid" person, trying to somehow play both sides for no reason you can comprehend. One person will say that if anyone gets kicked out, they'll leave two. And all those numbers may overlap! Moderation is hard.
- evandale 3y ago
  That sounds easy to solve - tell them to go pound salt. If it's a private mailing list where you're judge, jury, and executioner why would you cater to people who are looking to cause problems? Let them leave, there's a billion more people out there to join your list. Moderation is easy. Moderating without hurting the feelings of anonymous strangers is hard.
  - devilbunny 3y ago
    The list is basically dead, has been for a while, but in its heyday had a very effective moderation by mockery and abuse: The Cult of Father Darwin (https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3209&cid=1412491 https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3209&cid=1412491).
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    > That sounds easy to solve - tell them to go pound salt. Then your life becomes easy, because your mailing list becomes empty.

by sph 3y ago

igor47 3y ago

yes, a community can be cultivated. it's okay okay if it's just a moment in time and is meaningful for some and then people move on, it's also okay/wonderful if it takes off and becomes a haven of sanity and togetherness. i'm sorry if i came off as too jaded, i don't mean to dissuade you from trying, and i'm glad you're thinking about it! feel free to ping me if you want more technical tips, or if you want to use my mailman instance instead of trying to shave that particular hairy yak.

sph 3y ago
Maybe if you have an easily-accessible list of best practices to run mailman, I'd love to know. I won't lie to you, hearing you talk about DMARC and SPF makes my hair raise already, I hate dealing with SMTP, and I hoped it would be possible to set Mailman up leveraging third-party platforms (i.e. Postmark, Mailgun, etc.) so I wouldn't have to deal with that nonsense.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

> can't stupid people be booted from a mailing list? Of course. If you're the BOFH of the whole thing, you don't even need to get anyone else's approval. But if you do want the community to weigh in on who's "stupid" and who's not, then suddenly you might discover that three out of your ten members actually think that the person in question is a genius and is holding the whole thing together. Four members might think that booting anyone out at all runs counter to the purpose of your mailing list. Two people will privately email you and the "stupid" person, trying to somehow play both sides for no reason you can comprehend. One person will say that if anyone gets kicked out, they'll leave two. And all those numbers may overlap! Moderation is hard.

evandale 3y ago
That sounds easy to solve - tell them to go pound salt. If it's a private mailing list where you're judge, jury, and executioner why would you cater to people who are looking to cause problems? Let them leave, there's a billion more people out there to join your list. Moderation is easy. Moderating without hurting the feelings of anonymous strangers is hard.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  The list is basically dead, has been for a while, but in its heyday had a very effective moderation by mockery and abuse: The Cult of Father Darwin (https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3209&cid=1412491 https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3209&cid=1412491).
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > That sounds easy to solve - tell them to go pound salt. Then your life becomes easy, because your mailing list becomes empty.