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In lugnet.general, Kerry Raymond wrote:
> I think there are two main issues, one technical and one social.
>
> The technical. The need to confirm all the postings was introduced at a time
> when there was a problem of people posting under other people's identities.
> Maybe then this heavy-handed solution may have made sense, but maybe we
> could try making it easier to post again (speaking as an NNTP user). This is
> a problem very specific to LUGnet.
I think some method of preventing identity spoofing is a requirement for
maintaining the integrity of any online forum. I use the web interface almost
exclusively, so I've not found these systems as cumbersome as those who favor
other posting mechanisms, but this has long been a valid criticism here.
> The social. The different groups in LUGnet represent in some sense different
> communities. However, these communities could not effectively control the
> group they met within. Outsiders of the group could come in and complain
> about the language/content of postings. Other people widely regarded within
> the group as irritants could not be blacklisted. So these groups tended to
> find it easier to go off to create new forums in the hope of leaving behind
> the problem people. The whole point of creating a new forum is that you get
> to set the rules and have the arbitrary administrative power :-)
Having played the role both of "insider" and "outsider" in certain sub-groups
here on LUGNET, I can completely understand this problem. Perhaps one simple
solution would be to allow the curators for each newsgroup to designate each
list as either "public", "protected", or "private" (to loosely borrow
terminology from the C++ programming language) where a public list can be read
and posted by anyone, a protected list can be read by all but posted only by
approved members, and a private list can be read/subscribed and posted only by
members recognized by the group curators. Since LUGNET already has some lists
which are restricted for posting only by certain members, this might not be such
a technical stretch? I don't know.
This solution would allow each group to effectively blacklist irritants, and
would also enable groups that wish to use LUGNET for private discussions to do
so without fear of the "fish bowl" effect.
I haven't adjusted my own filter settings in awhile, so I don't remember if
LUGNET allows users to filter posts on the basis of who is posting, but this
would provide another method for members to avoid contact with others they find
irritating.
I would hope that any form of blacklisting or filtering would be used sparingly,
but I also know that my name would probably be one of the more frequent entries
in people's filter lists. :)
> This social problem not is specific to LUGnet. We don't yet have good
> technical solutions to enable a group within a larger forum to act in some
> "democratic" way to control its membership. My personal theory (FWIW) is
> that there needs to be some automated way of characterising people's
> participation in a group to establish if they are a "regular" group member.
> Then allow people to "blacklist" a problem person in their group. If
> "enough" blacklisting of a user occurs, all "regular" members are then asked
> to vote on suspending the problem person from that group (but not
> necessarily from other groups within the forum). If a person is suspended
> from "enough" groups within a forum, then they are expelled from the forum
> as a whole. Unlike a physical forum where people "cold-shoulder" the
> unwelcome people and "freeze" them out, online forums don't have the same
> range of options (currently).
I think this would be unnecessary if the suggestions above were implemented.
The group curators should of course be able to refer a particular member for
further administrative action, although it seems to me that what makes people
the most upset here is when someone is given a "time-out" for bad behavior. In
my experience, it has been rare that a post has risen to the level that
suspension or banishment has been warranted.
FUT lugnet.admin.suggestions
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Has Babylon Fallen?
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| I think there are two main issues, one technical and one social. The technical. The need to confirm all the postings was introduced at a time when there was a problem of people posting under other people's identities. Maybe then this heavy-handed (...) (18 years ago, 29-Nov-06, to lugnet.general)
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