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

[R. Bernstein]

Thanks also for the suggestion of setting up a list just to send out
moderator passwords. I'll pass that suggestion and the one by Robby on
global detection of mailing-neglect back to the the GNU discussion
group. I hope that will help. Should they go that route, I'll try to
withdraw the sourceforge feature request.

Where I think something inside GNU Mailman could be a little better
than a second list is that the integration could enforce that the
email associated with person logging in to the webpage or sending
moderation by email is also *currently* subscribed to the list***. The
theory here is that spammers don't want to receive the spam they spew.

***If I have this correct, where GNU mailman seems to differ from say
sourceforge bug and feature trackers is that in GNU Mailman where
there is a password associated with a moderator and an administrator
*account*, in sourceforge tracker, there is a moderator or
administrator *flag* is associated with a account(s) to grant
access. So to moderate or administer an account one uses one's
selected user account and password. As a result, is easier to effect
such an enforcement described above.

- - - 

I guess sometimes things are not what they may seem initally, so many
thanks for the detailed explanation; it all makes sense. It is also
interesting to learn that the GNU mailman mailing lists have the same
problems as other GNU lists. But it sounds like the GNU mailman lists
have very dedicated moderators.

Again at the risk of beating this horse dead, what we're looking for
is a way for mailing lists to distribute the burden of moderation such
as by having the mailing list be more self moderating as it appears
that the wiki works. (I could be wrong here about the wiki.) The
observation is that right now, a number of mailing lists at least GNU
mailing lists are just getting neglected, and this suggests something
is wrong. Maybe it's just a global misunderstanding of how to set up a
general help list (e.g. a documentation change), but I have a feeling
it's not just that.

I don't know how to or have a suggestion as to how to deal with
concerns of the getting discussions to the right user/developer group
or what should be indicated when making a feature request. However I
do see the wisdom in discussing things in the right venue. After all,
what's important is getting ideas and solving this problem, not
bothering or using up the bandwidth of the wrong people. So if this
discussion should be moved to the user list, please let me know.

Again thanks.