[Mailman-Developers] Advanced user reputation/moderation features

[Marlon Menezes]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at list.org> wrote:

>
> Taking this concept further, if you post to three different mailing lists
> that
> you are not a member of, and your held message gets approved each time with
> no
> rejections, we think you're probably okay in general and will let you post
> to
> any mailing list without moderation, regardless of whether you're a member
> or
> not.  See, your reputation is improving so you get more privileges.
>
> Each user in Launchpad also has a concept of "standing", which the admins
> can
> set but users cannot see or influence.  There are essentially four levels
> of
> standing: excellent, good, unknown, and poor.  If your standing is poor, we
> summarily discard your messages.  If your standing is good or better, then
> your posts go through without moderation.  So one of the tools we have to
> punish abusers is to set their standing to "poor" and wave goodbye.
>
> Barry,

Thanks for your detailed explanation. The concept of "standing" is in line
with my thinking, but I would like to extend it even further. As of now,
one's standing is completely in the hands of the list administrator, which
again, may be fine for a low volume technical mailing list. Why not
democratize it by allowing for input/feedback from the list members? Right
now, one of the biggest issues we are facing is that in very high volume
community/opinion discussion lists, the list administrators need to scan
hundreds of posts per day from legitimate members. Discussions often get
heated and discussion threads can go on endlessly. Sometimes,
administrators, may take actions that may not be appropriate, given their
inability to keep up with the discussions.  If the quality scores of posts
and discussion threads could be farmed out to the general list, it would
drastically reduce the burden on the administrators.

The issue of identify verification, spoofing etc are valid, but those
instances are exactly the occasions where the list admins should have time
to focus on.

Regards,
Marlon