At 6:56 PM -0800 2005-12-31, JC Dill wrote:
That's a very interesting and accurate observation. In fact, the moderated post that started this thread is one that I don't think I would have approved for posting to this list! I felt mildly (but not strongly) that this was a discussion that should probably take place on -users first, because it's a discussion about the possibility of changing the way the mailman list is used (by it's users) rather than a discussion about "developing" a new feature, per se. But, it's not totally off-topic for -dev so Brad is also "correct" for approving it.
Okay, now that is truly weird. I thought it was kind of
off-topic myself, but I thought that it would be one that either you or Barry would have approved of, so I approved it on that basis.
I guess that just goes to show that you shouldn't over-think the
process too much. ;)
The main problem I think Rocky is experiencing is the problem of absent moderators, period. Rather than some automated method of turning the moderator tasks over to others, I suggest that a better way is to more closely oversee pending moderator tasks so that the list owner and the list server administrator receive notices when a moderator's queue has not been recently attended to, and address the lack of moderation while the queue is still small and relatively fresh.
We're certainly seeing some issues of absentee moderators on some
of the lists at python.org, where my new version of the "mmdsr" script (see http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2005-December/048362.html) is showing that some lists have as many as 100 messages waiting in the queue to be moderated, and some of those messages date back to May of 2005. I think that this is a problem that needs to be addressed within the Mailman package, and not just something that can be observed externally through tools like "mmdsr".
However, I am not yet sure what would be the best way to resolve
this issue. I would like to see more discussion on that topic, although I'm not sure that mailman-developers is the best place to do that.
-- Brad Knowles, brad@stop.mail-abuse.org
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
LOPSA member since December 2005. See http://www.lopsa.org/.