[sf-lug] BALUG Tue 2018-06-19, E K-J on DC/OS,... etc

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Todd Hawley (celticdm at gmail.com):

> And forgive me for asking, but why does crossposting cause issues for
> list admins?  I sincerely want to know and I also want to know what
> these issues are.

Alice crossposts across list1 and list2, of which she's a member in
both cases.  Bob now follows up, but is only a member of list2, so his
post to list1 gets stuck in a moderation queue for the list1 listadmin.
Charlie also followsup, but he's a member only of list1, so his post is
held in list2's moderation queue.

Two separate listadmins now, if they're caring and polite people, face a
quandary.  list1's listadmin probably doesn't know Bob personally, and
doesn't know if his held post is because he's a list1 subscriber using a
different address who's accidentally used a variant e-mail address, as
sometimes happens, or whether he's someone not subscribed to list1 at
all.  This distinction matters for a lot of reasons, including the fact
that, in the second case, he's not going to even see any third-level
replies that might follow.

Meannwhile, list2's listadmin has a parallel problem caused by Charlie's
held post.  Who's this Charlie person, a list2 subscriber or not?  Note
that this is made more difficult than otherwise by the habit many people
have of not providing a realname field in their postings (and
subscriptions) at all, or one that varies.

Listadmins don't have time and patience to query everyone to sort all
this out, even if the people in question were statistically inclined to
give cogent answers to listadmin queries, which they definitely are not.

Both listadmins (list1's and list2's) could make their lives simpler by
just deciding they don't care, and that postings from non-subscribed
addresses can just silently fail or get rejected, as far as they're
concerned.  However, this has its own set of adverse consequences, such
as people wondering why they're seeing replies to postings the mailing
list apparently never received and are not in the archive.  _Or_ the
listadmins could make the other choice, and just bulk-approve all the
resulting cross-posted replies (a manual step in each case) and add
those addresses to the roster of non-subscribed addresses henceforth
permitted to send anything in the future to the mailing list at any
time.  (A caveat:  At least in the case of GNU Mailman, an e-mail
address on that roster is exempted from _all_ Mailman content controls
of all sorts for the destination mailing list, e.g., can henceforth send
the mailing list 2GB attachments that will not be rejected.)

Into this rosy picture one can also add Darlene, who happens to be on
both list1 and list2 along with Alice, but decides to start a huge
crossposted flamewar against the views of Alice and/or others of the
participants.  As ugly as regular Internet flamewars can be, ones with
artificially expanded audiences, especially of multiple groups not
normally in direct interactive contact, can be an order of magnitude
worse.  Also, it should be noted that there's an inherent social problem
when the rules of list1 differ from those of list2, and participants in
cross-posted discussion transgress one or the other, often without even
being aware that they're addressing an unexpected forum at all --
because, of course, people generally just do Reply-All and start typing,
without bothering to notice where their comments are going, or why.

After listadmins have gone through this circus a few times, many stop
even bothering to ask people politely to cease cross-posting, and just
create automated software filters to make sure it doesn't work any more.

> Ah yes, netiquette. I suspect most people on social media these days
> and some mailing lists other than this one that I used to be on have
> no clue what netiquette is or what it should be.

Indeed.  And thereby cause annoyances for others, which generally in the
fullness of time, and sometimes really quickly, causes annoyance to them
because sh** flows downhill, especially if they excessively annoy the
listadmins.

Please note:  My having been willing to write 75+ lines explaining the
above to you doesn't mean you get a vote or that it's somehow become
debatable.  You don't, and it's not.  No offence intended; just the truth.  
(People in the Linux community sometimes misunderstand this point.)