Re: news.gnome.org again

[mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus)]

+++ Mon, Apr 09, 2001 at 12:06:15AM -0500 +++
Cody Russell e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> I think news.gnome.org should remove the user comments feature entirely,
> and become strictly a news reporting site.  As far as I can tell, the
> comments feature is used almost exclusively by trolls.  Every time I
> look on this site, I am saddened and today I began reading some of the
> comments under the "Reef Project Announcement" headline and it just
> pissed me off. 
[schnibble]

Repugnant, isn't it? I was thinking exactly the same the moment before
I saw this mail of yours. Fascinating.

> This stuff is just using GNOME machine resources and is doing nothing
> useful.  Furthermore, I think it's harmful because it makes GNOME's
> websites look very unprofessional, and even very immature.  We obviously
> can't moderate the user comments, so I think they should just be removed
> entirely.

We should not remove comments completely, but instate some kind of
membership scheme that requires a news.gnome.org account to post
anything in the comments system. This would:
- raise the threshold for participating
- only let people post who are willing to give a valid e-mail address
  and a real name
- make moderation by user and not just by posting possible
etc.

I was also thinking about some kind of moderation scheme a la
Slashdot, just less complicated. Maybe grant moderator rights to all
the GNOME developers, i.e. everyone listed in the voters' list for the
GNOME foundation; those could then kill postings at will. Of course a
switch to show moderated postings would be provided, just like on
Slashdot. Replies to moderated postings would be hidden by default,
too, so flamewars wouldn't display.

My rationale for proposing to let the comments live is the probable
reaction to removing them completely. We would have loony KDE users
screaming all over the net that GNOME is afraid of user reactions,
forbidding free speech, locking the community out of news.gnome.org
etc.

With a moderation scheme, with some luck people will just complain
about "censorship", nothing else.

mawa
-- 
THINGS THE WORLD NEEDS MORE OF #2:

Hot chocolate.