META: Pool Rules

[Andrew Perron]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:53:02 +0000 (UTC), Russ Allbery wrote:

>   This happens a lot with replies from
>   Google Groups when the original poster used a keyword in [], since
>   Google Groups unhelpfully removes that keyword automatically.  (I have
>   no idea who thought that was a good idea.)

SERIOUSLY. I would honestly rather use [KEYWORD] than KEYWORD:, but for the
sake of the Google Groups users I stick with the latter.

> The primary effect of moderation here is to eliminate the spam, which is
> on the order of 10-25 posts a day otherwise that y'all never see (and that
> mostly I never see either, since I have a Bayesian filter that discards
> most of it).

Neat!

> Other than that, the main effect of moderation is to enforce the keywords.
> Honestly, I'm dubious about how important that is now.  Originally, there
> was a concern that the group would be high-traffic and people would have a
> hard time finding the stuff in the universes they care about and ignoring
> the stuff in the universes they didn't care about, but I really doubt this
> is an active problem for anyone at this point.  But it's in the charter,
> so I keep doing it, and it's also a *great* way of catching spam, even
> spam that comes from forged email addresses of regulars (which happens).

I think-- *hope*-- that this'll become more important reasonably soon.

> I generally figure everyone's an adult and people will sort things out
> amongst themselves given some time and opportunity, and that's generally
> been the case.  People get upset, have public arguments, leave the group
> in a huff, come back later (or not), and occasionally yell at each other,
> but to me it's always seemed within the realm of fairly normal
> interpersonal drama for a group of people collaborating.  I don't know
> that it's actually better to try to stifle all of that; I'd be worried
> that it would just break out in some other way, and possibly more
> unpleasantly and more passive-aggressively.

Agreed and agreed, good sir.

> What I can do as moderator is keep people from coming in from outside and
> stirring the pot just for the hell of it, which has been attempted a few
> times in the past and for which I have no tolerance.  But when it's an
> argument between people who are all invested in the group, I think I'd
> normally do more harm than good by trying to get in the middle of it.

Indeed.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, we're all adults here, and honestly, if
Martingeddon is the worst we have...