Re: [OT] Off-topic posts

[Nick Mathewson <nickm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 09:13:05AM -0400, phobos@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 12:12:32PM +0200, sven@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote 0.6K bytes in 22 lines about:
> : Tor-related are marked with [OT] in the subject. I think this is the  
> : least we can do for those who are just interested in the Tor stuff, so  
> : they can filter/skip those mails.
> 
> I vote for just kicking people off the list.  While this may feed into
> their fascism/censorship fantasies, dropping the signal to noise ratio
> doesn't help anyone search the archives nor get their questions
> answered.

(I haven't run this post by anybody else, so I'm speaking for myself
  at the moment.)

I second that.  

From time to time we get people who believe that or-talk should really
be my-favorite-topic-talk.  Sometimes they want to tell everybody
about the fiendish floridators, or about religious or ethnic groups
that they dislike, or about who really shot JFK, or how the world
economy is secretly run by a cabal of Israeli lemur-smugglers.  I
don't know whether they genuinely believe that they're on topic, or
whether they know they're off-topic but can't help themselves, or
whether they are just trying to find an audience that they cannot get
elsewhere.

In practice, it makes no difference why they disrupt the list:
off-topic crap makes the list less useful, and needs to go.  It gives
people who follow the list big piles of non-tor-related stuff to wade
through, and lowers the tenor of discussions in general by getting
people pissed off pointlessly.  (Is it just me, or have a lot of
discussions here gotten way more _ad hominem_ in the last couple of
months?)  I know we made this list in order to have somewhere slightly
more broad-ranging than or-dev, but it's still supposed to be a
discussion list about Tor, not a flame list about everything.

Moderation here seems to be limited to writing a mail like this once
or twice a year, and booting really obnoxious people when we get
around to it.  This approach has the advantage of leaving stuff pretty
open, and letting people err on the side of speaking their minds.  But
it has the disadvantage of giving some people the impression that
anything that doesn't get them kicked off is okay.  That's regrettable
in my opinion.

Some requests:

   * Please, before your next post, ask yourself, "Is this really
     about Tor?"  Then ask, "Would anybody else agree that it's about
     Tor?"  Remember, other people joined this list in order to
     discuss Tor too... and the "Tor" that they joined up to discuss
     is not some unusual sense of the word "Tor" that includes grey
     aliens, or Lyndon LaRouche/Ayn Rand fanfic, or whatever.

   * Please don't get in the habit of responding to insane off-topic
     people.  When you do, there are now _two_ people discussing the
     Fiendish Fluoridators on rec.pets.cats.

   * If you're in the habit of flaming people, could you please
     ratchet it down some?  Whether your targets deserve it or not,
     not all matters of truth and right are best decided through
     bloodsport.

   * If you're wondering whether I might be talking about you, please
     act as though I am.  Even if I'm not, (and I say this with all
     respect) we could all stand to get more polite and more on-topic.
     Myself included!

Many thanks,
-- 
Nick Mathewson