discuss: Thread: Re: Avoiding high traffic on the discuss list in the future.

On 2/9/2016 3:31 AM, David Lawyer wrote:
>
>
> On 2/7/2016 4:43 AM, ####@####.#### wrote:
>> On Saturday, February 06, 2016 09:54:54 PM you wrote:
>>>> On Feb 6, 2016, at 8:48 PM, David ####@####.####  wrote:
>>>> Also, I want to mention that the above paragraph which discusses
>>>> individual howtos, doesn't belong on the discuss list.  The high traffic
>>>> on the discuss list in the past that was not related to ldp policy and
>>>> progress turned off a lot of contributors from subscribing to it or
>>>> reading it.  I hope the same mistake isn't made again.  One person should
>>>> handle details on individual documents unless there is controversy about
>>>> the document.
>>> Sounds fair.  I envision that once you get in touch with someone who can do
>>> the merge for you that this discussion can take place off list.  No need
>>> for the entire discuss list to see it.
>> Interesting.  I feel just the opposite, I'll discuss why below.
>>
>> Maybe we need two mailing lists, one for ldp policy (possiby to be named
>> ####@####.#### and one for discussion (perhaps of documents??), maybe
>> ####@####.#### ;-)
>>
>> My arguments may start out a little disjointed / disorganized, maybe just some
>> bullet points at first:
>>
>>     * how will anyone know something is controversial before the publication of
>> a howto (or other document) unless some of the points of contention
>> (discussion) between a reviewer and a writer are publicized to some degree?
>>
>> That's all I'll say for now.  A;though I may add more later.  I (we) don't
>> want to see a repetition of the C++ Howto which was written by one author and
>> apparently never reviewed by anyone until I tried reading it to learn
>> something.  It was ridiculous.  (I apologize in advance--I might be mis-
>> remembering, it might have been the (or a) C howto.
> Randy Kramer
> It was the C++ howto. It has been removed from our collection as a 
> result of discussion on the discuss list. 3 other howtos by the same 
> author were also removed at this time. I looked into the situation and 
> found one of his howtos to be almost all plagarism of other docs.  I 
> also found that the author had posted elsewhere, what amounted to an 
> internet scam.  The author was invited to join the discuss list to 
> discuss his howtos but refused to do so. I thought that he was 
> negligently careless, tended to wildly exaggerate and made numerous 
> errors.  In this case someone on the LDP staff contacted the author 
> after receiving multiple complaints about his docs and the staff 
> member brought the issue up on the discuss list, although the problem 
> had previously been mentioned on discuss.  It's an example of a 
> controversial issue being referred to the list with a proposal to 
> possibly remove the authors "contributions" from the LDP collection.  
> They are noted as "removed for review" but I doubt if they were every 
> actually reviewed later on.
>
> So if we have a howto coordinator, that's the person potential authors 
> write to if they want to write a howto.  Getting a response from a 
> real person that encourages them to write the doc is more likely to 
> motivate someone to actually carry through with their project.  But 
> suppose the howto coordinator isn't sure that the LDP should accept 
> the proposal.  One person wrote a howto on how to make tea for a LUG 
> meeting (*Russian*-*Tea*-*HOWTO)*. It's been removed.  A published 
> howto is "Howto encourage women in linux".  These are controversial 
> howto topics.  Should LDP accept such a  topic for a howto?  This is 
> where the discuss list comes in, although the howto coordinator might 
> tell the potential author (or the author, if the howto is already 
> written) that s/he thinks the discuss list will not accept it.
>
> So there will be cases where controversy is established either before 
> or after publication, and both the staff and others can refer such a 
> problem to the discuss list.
>