[talk-au] A modest proposal fo OSM mailing list reform

[John Smith]

On 21 May 2011 13:52, Nick Hocking <nick.hocking at gmail.com> wrote:
> Forums (IMO) are much superior to mailing lists for one simple reason....
> If the forum software is a threaded one then it is really easy to avoid
> reading any drivel from the trolls. You just ignore the whole thread if the
> troll starts it or just ignore any parts of an otherwise useful thread if it
> becomes troll infested.
>
> With mailing lists it is easy to just not open a post from a troll but if
> someone else directly quotes a troll then it is a bit tricky to "stop
> reading instantly".
>
> The trick is that the forum must be threaded. Of course the desperate trolls
> will then start to put their poison in the subject line and to increase
> their use of sock puppets so as to try to trick us into reading their
> garbage. At this point there, unfortunately, needs to be some form of
> moderation/banning (or CENSORSHIP as the trolls will bleat).

While not a forum, you do realise you can do the same thing with a
newsgroup interface?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mailing_lists#Reading_mailing_lists_via_newsgroup_interface