Polling or voting on list
Our list would benefit from an ability on the part of listmembers to vote on proposals made by listowners. In this type of discussion list a non-secret ballot would be appropriate, and both a tally of pro and con vote totals along with table (text file?) showing the vote associated with each subscribed email address. The results could be sent to each listmember or posted somehow on the list webmail site. (Does mailman have an area like Sympa's _Shared Documents_ area in the web interface?) Also, a way of setting a deadline for voting would have to be an option. (In our case a voting period of between 10 and 30 days would be appropriate.)
Thanks for any info about mailman's current capabilities along these lines or suggestions for implementing this functionality.
Ed
Within the contest of a mailing list would be voting or rating posts?
Either way, I don't think mailman currently have such feature.
Cheers!
sent from Google nexus 4 On 22 Aug 2013 17:54, "e.c." <eminmn@sysmatrix.net> wrote:
Our list would benefit from an ability on the part of listmembers to vote on proposals made by listowners. In this type of discussion list a non-secret ballot would be appropriate, and both a tally of pro and con vote totals along with table (text file?) showing the vote associated with each subscribed email address. The results could be sent to each listmember or posted somehow on the list webmail site. (Does mailman have an area like Sympa's _Shared Documents_ area in the web interface?) Also, a way of setting a deadline for voting would have to be an option. (In our case a voting period of between 10 and 30 days would be appropriate.)
Thanks for any info about mailman's current capabilities along these lines or suggestions for implementing this functionality.
Ed
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/seun.ojedeji%40gmail.co...
Thanks, Seun. I suspected as much. The purpose of the prospective voting is to offload all moderator functions onto the general membership in those cases where the mailman program itself is not able mediate those functions (e.g. having owners set maximum daily posting limits per member and for the whole list). The list in questions is of planetary scope (with members from all continents except Antarctica and including members having 20 or 30 different native languages and the widest imaginable spectrum of opinions on political, cultural, and religious matters and with all these areas and many others considered on topic) so it's not typical of dedicated discussion groups. The prime directive here is to protect freedom of speech (writing, actually) while also providing for the fair-minded restraint of the occasional loose canon. From this short description of the problem it might seem that the group should have succumbed to anarchy long ago but it has been in continued existence since 1996.
Ed
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com>wrote:
Within the contest of a mailing list would be voting or rating posts?
Either way, I don't think mailman currently have such feature.
Cheers!
sent from Google nexus 4 On 22 Aug 2013 17:54, "e.c." <eminmn@sysmatrix.net> wrote:
Our list would benefit from an ability on the part of listmembers to vote on proposals made by listowners. In this type of discussion list a non-secret ballot would be appropriate, and both a tally of pro and con vote totals along with table (text file?) showing the vote associated with each subscribed email address. The results could be sent to each listmember or posted somehow on the list webmail site. (Does mailman have an area like Sympa's _Shared Documents_ area in the web interface?) Also, a way of setting a deadline for voting would have to be an option. (In our case a voting period of between 10 and 30 days would be appropriate.)
Thanks for any info about mailman's current capabilities along these lines or suggestions for implementing this functionality.
Ed
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/seun.ojedeji%40gmail.co...
e.c. writes:
Thanks, Seun. I suspected as much. The purpose of the prospective voting is to offload all moderator functions onto the general membership in those cases where the mailman program itself is not able mediate those functions (e.g. having owners set maximum daily posting limits per member and for the whole list).
This may not give you the results you hope for in the context of a mailing list. It's commonly seen on web forums, in the form of +/- buttons on comments so that spammy or off-topic ones can be moderated out of sight. However for this to reflect general opinion of the subscribers on a mailing list, you would need to quarantine the message, then wait for a quorum to vote. This is disruptive of message flow, at the very least, and would likely introduce (new) biases in the posts, due to the fact that lurkers are different from (volunteer) moderators are more or less different from posters.
If you want to experiment, it would be an interesting experiment. But if you want to preserve the spirit of the list while lessening the burden on administrators (specifically moderators), I would suggest converting to a web forum.
There is a third possibility, which is to wait for Mailman 3 and see what comes up. Mailman 3 itself is going to be basically the same as Mailman 2 in terms of post distribution and moderation. However, instead of bundling Pipermail, which by today's standards isn't even a bare-bones archive manager (no search function), the recommended archive manager is HyperKitty. HyperKitty is very much "in progress," but already has some social networking/web forum-like features.
Good luck with your experiment!
Steve
participants (3)
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e.c. -
Seun Ojedeji -
Stephen J. Turnbull