Re: [tdf-moderators] Re: re. Invitation: Dear God,s Select,

Hi Anne, *,

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 9:17 PM, anne-ology <laginnis@gmail.com> wrote:
>        I do that for a very simple reason;
>            so all of this group is aware of what's happening.

As the explanation that follows is rather longish, here the short-form:
the decision whether a mail is spam or legitimate is fast, moderators
know immediately whether to let it pass or ignore it. Replying to
moderate it is fast as well. Much faster than reading an additional
mail, so any notices about what actions one moderator did take are not
needed.

But here's the long version about why letting the group know "what's
happening" doesn't make sense. There are a total of 3 cases, and in
neither a forwarded mail makes sense.

1) you let the mail pass to the list
   → moderators will see the mail on the list → that is their
notification that they don't need to take action (even if they do,
nothing happens, the mail won't be delivered twice to the list)

2) you don't let the mail pass because it is obvious spam
    → other moderators will also know this is spam and not let them
pass. Sending a note "this is spam" is telling the other moderators:
"I don't think you're smart enough to tell that this is a spam
message". So no benefit here.

3) you explicitly reject the message because it is not-so-obvious-spam
or because it contains flames/hatred/whatever
    → no matter what moderators think of it, you already made the
decision. Whether moderators ignore it or reply to it to let it pass,
it doesn't have any effect. A note won't really help.

People get moderation requests immediately, and any note you sent will
be only with a delay. So the chances that moderators already have read
& parsed & made their decision whether to let it pass or ignore before
reading any of your notes.

The only case when it makes sense to send notification to other
moderators is when you reject a mail with the intend to contact the
author of the rejected mail on why it was rejected ("I'll let the
poster know that his mail contained private data, and the poster might
not be aware that this info will be public in various archives"). I.e.
when you reject (and then it must be a reject, and not just ignore to
let it expire) a "legitimate" mail (no spam or similar).

Remember:
Moderator's job as in "technical mailinglist administrator" is to let
mails through to the list from people that are not subscribed.

It happens that also spam is sent to the list-address, that obviously
should not be passed. moderator's job is not to replace a spam-filter
(there already are spam filters before it even gets handed over to the
mailing list system) - but rather to let valid postings through.
Ignoring the spam is just a side-effect.

Of course it depends on the type of list whether on what the ratio of
spam to legitimate messges is (announce lists have more "spam", as
real people using it is low, etc)

And there are of course other meanings of moderator, but those are
unrelated to a "technical mailing-list moderator" as is the topic
here. If you have spare cycles, you can moderate the list itself in
the sense of acting as a mediator, take care that the tone on the
lists stays friendly, and similar - but this then happens on the list
itself or by private mails to the people involved in the discussion on
the list and does not affect the other "technical mailinglist
moderators" :-)

ciao
Christian

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