[Mailman-Developers] On allowing any list member to be an email moderator

[Brad Knowles]

At 6:40 PM -0500 2005-12-31, R. Bernstein wrote:

>  So it might be nice to have a box or flag for such a mailing list that
>  allows anyone who is registered in the mailing list have the pleasure
>  of doing email moderation.

	You can list as many moderators for a list as you like.


	But there's a problem with multiple moderators, one that we have 
on the mailman-users and mailman-developers lists ourselves -- in 
addition to many other lists hosted on python.org.  In short, the 
problem is getting all the moderators to follow the same moderation 
policy.

	Even if you have agreed on a moderation policy, there is still a 
certain amount of judgement required, and Barry might feel one way 
regarding a given post, JC might feel a different way, and I might be 
somewhere on the fence -- or any other combination of the various 
people involved.

	And that's when we all agree on the policy that should be 
implemented, or remember what it was that we all agreed on several 
months ago.

>  I suppose this could be subject for abuse too (discard valid posts and
>  accept spam), but I have a feeling that to first order approximaton
>  this would be a big help.  And doesn't mailman already have ways of
>  watching users or moderators, and revoking moderation by the
>  administrator or whatnot?

	No, there is no monitoring of the moderators -- within their 
limited set of actions they are allowed to perform, their actions are 
absolute, and for the most part are not reversible -- once a message 
is discarded, it is gone and there's nothing you can do to get it 
back.  The same is true of the list administrators.  You could always 
re-subscribe someone if they've been unsubscribed by someone else, 
but that's about it.

	The kind of monitoring you're talking about would add significant 
additional load on the system, and would force the administrators to 
do a lot more work to keep checking up on the moderators, etc.... 
This would further concentrate the workload on an even smaller group 
of people, which I think is precisely the sort of thing you were 
trying to eliminate.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  LOPSA member since December 2005.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.