[OpenISO] OpenISO.org Review of OOXML: Launch

[Claude Almansi]

Hi Norbert and All

Inviting Microsoft people rather than having them subscribing
incognito anyway seems a sage idea, apart from the fairness motive you
evoke.

Re rudeness leading to moderation of post, your proposal to ensure
that moderation is transparent is very thoughtful. But  with the
possibility to subscribe to the mailing list about moderation with the
"read on the web" or "daily digest" option, please, based on some
harrowing experiences I've had in Italian projects who tried something
similar and provoked avalanches of - often 1-line - flames.


(...)
>
> Here's a definition of the type of rudeness that I'm talking about:
>
>   "The deliberate use of provocative language intended to irritate or
>   annoy an individual; ascribing negative connotations to an
>   individual without evidence or reasoned analysis; mockery or
>   dismissal of someone else's honestly held viewpoint."
>
> (Source: Kieren McCarthy,
> http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/arc/governance/2007-11/msg00507.html )

Great: reasoned, icily courteous bashing à l'anglaise is much more fun
anyway (jooooking).

As to:
>
> I believe that the only reasonable policy is to have a rule against
> such rudeness and enforce it irrespective of against whom the rudeness
> is directed.
>
> Specifically, here's what I have in mind:
>
> - The "Guidelines" documents and the "welcome messages" for the
>   email mailing lists implementing the OpenISO.org "Working
>   Groups" will make clear that behavior such as rudeness which
>   is disruptive of fact-oriented discussion is not considered
>   acceptable, and will result in the transgressor "being moderated"
>   (i.e. the mailing list system would hold future postings from
>   them for checking and manual approval by a "moderator" who will
>   check that the postings are -in his or her reasonable judgement-
>   not rude or otherwise disruptive).
>
> - In order to prevent such moderation from resulting in a severe
>   loss of transparency and accountability, I plan to set up an
>   additional mailing list <modevents at OpenISO.org> which will not
>   be used for substantive discussions, but only for informing
>   anyone who might be interested about "moderation events" (such
>   as someone being added to the list of people whose postings
>   will be help for moderation, or a posting being rejected) and
>   for complaints/discussion/rants/whatever about such modevents.
>   There will be no moderation of the modevents mailing list;
>   participants of that mailing list are expected to know how to
>   use killfiles or equivalent blackholing techniques.
>
> The point of this set-up is to ensure that rude people and other
> trouble-makers are not able to prevent the Working-Group mailing
> lists from fullfilling their function.  The modevents mailing list
> does not need such protection because it is not a problem with
> regard to the goals of OpenISO.org if rude people prevent useful
> discussions from occurring on that list.
>

See the beginning of my reply: just make sure people can opt for
online-reading or daily digest for the second list. But you normally
do anyway.

Best

Claude