[Sosfbay-discuss] Applying NVC to the situtation...

[Cameron L. Spitzer]

For now, I'm in charge of sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org.
It's paid for by the Green Party of California through
its IT Subcommittee.  That makes GP of Cal responsible
for it, and my charge over it is delegated from GP of Cal.

Here is my philosophy about running a discussion
list, which has been the de-facto charter of this list
for years.  He who governs least, governs best.
That is, no rules that are not needed to prevent harm.
Trust the subscribers to behave themselves well enough
most of the time.  Politeness is common sense.

Revealing confidential information is harmful.  Could be
personal, or strategic.  Threats and insults are harmful.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnism, etc etc are harmful.
Sarcasm is often harmful.
Technical stunts like broad crossposting and
tricky Bcc arrangements have done harm.  Subscribing
one mailing list to another makes a mess.
Subscribing addresses you don't control is harmful.

But the most harmful recurring behavior I've seen in
two decades of email and Usenet has been the angry
back-and-forth known as "flame wars."  In the heat of the moment,
people reply to email in ways they might not face to face.
They degrade the value of a mailing list, driving away the
most thoughtful subscribers, in a spiral that has wrecked
much of Usenet and countless mailing lists and web fora.
They're easy to stop, just let the other guy have
the last word.

Flame wars often begin with one subscriber trying to
control the behavior of another.
The flame wars over restricting visitors do
more harm than the visitors' presence might.
So my rule is the same as for a face to face meeting.
Visitors welcome as long as they don't disrupt the
meeting.  I can imagine a visitor might be interested in
us as a typical county, whether we are or not, just as
a Green from the East might want to sit in on our
business meeting.

Relax.  Trust your list owner.  If a visitor gets out of
hand, I deal with it off-list.  I can block them if I
have to.

-- 
Cameron, your autocratic list dictator.
http://greens.org/cls