Mailman, the manager for the mailing list doesn’t offer any such option. The closest that could be done is if a topic just goes on too long, a filter could be added to the list configuration which holds for moderation messages which match the subject. The problem is that if someone changes the subject slightly, it might not get caught by the filter depending on how detailed the filter was.

On Dec 3, 2019, at 2:18 PM, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer wrote:

 I suggest we find a way to close a mail thread. Obviously we can't stop people from sending mails, but, like when a mod sees the topic has been juiced out, he closes the topic which practically means:

if mailman sees mails being sent to a topic closed by a mod, it does not relay it to the list.

It is normally difficult to say when a topic has been juiced out (the essentials have been said, with no new inputs). One might close the topic prematuraly. So, a time-based automatic closing might be better. Example: After 5 days, a topic is closed. A mod can extend the closing though.

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer http://www.pythonmembers.club | https://github.com/Abdur-rahmaanJ Mauritius _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/V4NS5D... Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

Ok posted it with the idea than mailman operated on python and the mods were hackers enough to add functionalities. Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer http://www.pythonmembers.club | https://github.com/Abdur-rahmaanJ Mauritius

On Dec 3, 2019, at 11:17, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer wrote:

I suggest we find a way to close a mail thread. Obviously we can't stop people from sending mails, but, like when a mod sees the topic has been juiced out, he closes the topic

This does already happen, if only by human process/convention, not technical enforcement. A mod says “We’re just going around in circles here, and it’s getting heated for no good reason, and there’s no actual proposal likely to come out of this, so stop responding unless you have something genuinely worth reopening over.” And I think this has worked well enough without technical enforcement, especially given how rarely it comes up—most threads just die out of their own accord. Occasionally you get a couple more replies over the next few days from people who hadn’t read to the end of the thread, and a filter could block those, but is that a big enough deal to be worth fixing?

It is normally difficult to say when a topic has been juiced out (the essentials have been said, with no new inputs). One might close the topic prematuraly. So, a time-based automatic closing might be better. Example: After 5 days, a topic is closed. A mod can extend the closing though.

Threads that actually end up going somewhere invariably last much longer than 5 days, and requiring a mod to manually extend them (especially repeatedly) would be wasted effort. And, worse, it would be a brand new opportunity to frequently get things wrong, and for people to get used to working around that (which would be trivial to do—just edit the subject), and pretty soon you’ve just got the original problem back but harder to manage than before, plus the threading on many of the actually useful threads is broken. Also, why do you want to encourage such a rush in the first place? The language evolves on 18-month cycles, and changes that aren’t pure library additions often take 3 cycles; if it takes a month to fully discuss an idea, who cares? If some people want to tune out after the first week, they can, and already do. And if someone like Serhiy or even Guido is away for a week, does that mean every thread started during that week should get resolved without their frequently crucial input?

Richard Damon writes:

Mailman, the manager for the mailing list doesn’t offer any such option. The closest that could be done is if a topic just goes on too long, a filter could be added to the list configuration which holds for moderation messages which match the subject. The problem is that if someone changes the subject slightly, it might not get caught by the filter depending on how detailed the filter was.

I'm -1 on both moderator-driven closure and time-driven closure (ping me if you care why ;-). That said, Mailman is a Python application and the extension interface is basically "derive a class from Handler or Rule with a method named 'process'." This kind of thing requires very little Mailman expertise (and I assure you the Mailman devs care a lot about Python: if the moderators want you to implement this, we will help). Regarding filtering on the subject, that's not how threading works. If you want to filter on subject as well as close the thread, fine, but the chance that someone accidentally changes the subject and it slips past the filter is very small. Most likely it's a deliberate attempt to either maintain context for a new thread, or evade the filter. Even if the latter, detecting such is still most cheaply done by humans, unless you're Amazon scale (Japanese news analysis today reported that Amazon proactively deletes reviews that its "AI" judges to be inauthentic or generated commercially).

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer http://www.pythonmembers.club | https://github.com/Abdur-rahmaanJ Mauritius On Wed, 4 Dec 2019, 07:38 Steven D'Aprano, wrote:

What problem are you trying to solve? Are we suffering under a burden of pople resurrecting old threads from ten years ago, or even a year ago?

Easy digging of threads.

On 04/12/2019 03:50, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer wrote:

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer http://www.pythonmembers.club | https://github.com/Abdur-rahmaanJ Mauritius

On Wed, 4 Dec 2019, 07:38 Steven D'Aprano, wrote:

...

What problem are you trying to solve? Are we suffering under a burden of pople resurrecting old threads from ten years ago, or even a year ago?

Easy digging of threads.

Which is a problem because...? -- Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd

On 04/12/2019 12:44, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer wrote:

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer http://www.pythonmembers.club | https://github.com/Abdur-rahmaanJ Mauritius

On Wed, 4 Dec 2019, 15:16 Rhodri James, wrote:

...

Which is a problem because...?

-- Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd

An advantage. If the topic goes round several times, the mods closing the topic freezes the thread so that the thread does not gets filled with unnecessary details. Python threads are bit like a plane from Paris bound for London via direct flight but which sometimes detours through Tokyo and Manilla. In fact you might ask yourself HOW in the world are you in São Paulo.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you said. I thought that you were complaining that its too easy to dig threads (and misunderstood what "digging threads" meant to you). You're actually complaining about the opposite; that it's too hard to mine threads for information. Sorry, but that's true of any conversation. If you want information out of a thread, you are going to have to put in the work of reading and comprehending it. The only way around that is to get a technical PA to read and comprehend it for you and produce a summary. Sometimes someone is inspired to do that, and a FAQ appears. Mostly you're on your own. Closing down threads isn't going to help. It may reduce the clutter that the solitary piece of information you are interested in is buried under, but it also increases the chance that the information isn't there at all. More to the point, it isn't going to make the thread any less convoluted.

Another advantage of the proposed idea might be to make programmers more responsible by writing what is necessary and as in depth as possible.

Um. I've sat on and chaired a lot of committees in my time, with a lot of different rules of engagement. I have not seen any approach to discussion that has made anyone be more responsible, succinct or accurate. Attempting to curtail discussion usually has the opposite effect, and puts everyone in a bad mood for the next item as well. -- Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 4:47 AM Rhodri James wrote:

Sorry, but that's true of any conversation. If you want information out of a thread, you are going to have to put in the work of reading and comprehending it. The only way around that is to get a technical PA to read and comprehend it for you and produce a summary. Sometimes someone is inspired to do that, and a FAQ appears.

Exactly -- so please contribute to: https://pythonchb.github.io/PythonListsSummaries/python_ideas/index.html The idea is to have a place for thread summaries that don't get to the PEP stage -- there are a LOT iof ideas that get re-discussed here ... -CHB -- Christopher Barker, PhD Python Language Consulting - Teaching - Scientific Software Development - Desktop GUI and Web Development - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython