North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Pat Meadows <pat@containerseeds.com>]

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 00:31:19 EST, you wrote:

>Dear list,
>
>My 2 cents worth also stands with Greg. To ban or not to ban is the 
>question. 
>
>Where is the fine line in the wind blown sand?  

I've been on email lists a long time and Usenet newsgroups
for a long time (until they mostly became worthless because
of spammers and trolls) - 16 years, to be exact - since the
days when the Internet was available to anyone but
universities and the government.  That's an aeon in
'Internet time'.

The policy that I have generally seen adopted on mailing
lists is this:

1.  The desires of the list-owner are the rules.  He/she
gets to make the rules and to enforce them or not.

2.  It helps if there are written guidelines for the list so
members can know what is or is not allowed.  

3.  Moderators (if it's a moderated list) do *not* edit
posts.  They either kill them or send them as is.

4.  On unmoderated lists - where all posts go directly to
the membership (like this one) - listowners will generally
warn offenders at least once.  More patient listowners will
warn offenders two or three times:  then they kick them out.

This policy usually works pretty well.  

Total laissez-faire is very apt to wind up in chaos and a
useless list.

>
>Maybe a private censure statement could be privately sent to offenders by 
>the 
>moderator. But again where is the line not to be crossed.  

It's - again - up to the listowner.  

On lists I have owned I did not tolerate spam, harassment,
obscenities, stalking, bigotry, repeated irrelevant posts
obviously meant to harass, flame wars, or discussion of
verboten topics, if any (usually religion, politics, gun
control, abortion rights).  

I am able to draw the line at an appropriate point (judging
by the fact that lists I owned retained their membership and
were lively and not 'sound asleep').  I think most people
would be able to do this also.

Pat


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