Mailing List Netiquette Enforcement Via Software?

Rob Kaper asks: "While administrating various e-mail mailing lists (with ezmlm), I noticed that most users lack an understanding of Netiquette. For example, they send their reply above the original, while quoting the entire original message. I could of course tighten the list policies and kick off offenders, but that would be a rather harsh solution. Is there software available that enforces or stimulates obedience of the Netiquette guidelines? (for example mailing list software that reformats ugly replies, converts HTML to plain text or bounces such e-mails)" Such programs would be useful to mailing-list maintainers who have bandwidth quotas. Any clues?

Comments

The Human Element

[AdamJ]

I've run several fairly high traffic mailing lists for going on four years now, and while I've never looked into automated features to help out newbies, I've never really thought they were needed.

First of all, every single list needs a FAQ, or if the amount of specifics for each list is small enough, you need a global FAQ for all the lists. At the very least, this FAQ needs to contain:

* the name of the list
* who's running it
* the purpose of the list
* the amount of email that you can expect to get on it (Some people don't realize that a busy mailing list can easily hit 100+ messages a day)
* the web address to unsubscribe and subscribe if your mailing list software supports it
* the email commands to unsubscribe, subscribe, set yourself to digest, nomail, etc.
* a brief description of those features.

And, finally, the biggie:

* Expected posting guidelines. Don't scrimp on these. You'll always have some user who thinks that they have the right to free speech everywhere and that they don't have to play by the rules, and the better your posting guidelines are the easier it is to say "Sorry kid, go play on Usenet" and unsubscribe him.

(Anyone who has run a mailing list understands this type of user.)

Sample posting guidelines for the lists I run:

* Place your replies below the text you're quoting, snip irrelevant text, make sure you correctly attribute the people you're responding to.
* No HTML, attachements, vcards, or anything but pure straight text.
* Don't flame, post anything illegal, spam, harass other list members, and try to keep stuff On Topic.

Keeping stuff On Topic is another side note - it's hard to do, and nobody wants to watch email all day and bitch at people for being OT or not. We've had good success asking people to prefix posts that they KNOW are off topic with the [OT] tag. People who have absolutely no desire to read off topic stuff can then filter it out.

Also, clearly lay out what the punishments are for violations. We use a three strikes rule - you get two personal warnings, and on the third you get removed from the list. You're allowed to resubscribe, but if you violate again we'll ask you not to resubscribe for a length of time.

We've only ever had to block one person from acessing our lists once in my four years with them, and I believe once before I started working with them too. Not a bad record for 7 years...

Now, to get to the subject of my post - The Human Element.

The lists we run always have two main Admins - The Fearless Leader and the Assistant Fearless Leader. From there we add another people as neede d - we have someone who maintains the FAQs and the website that they're on, and on one of the lists we have someone who maintains a Newbies Guide (Said list is an Interactive Fiction list, and has strict guidelines so such a guide is necessary).

For the busiest list we have what we call GridSec, or without the "themed" term, Flunkies. :)

These people do the day to day job of scanning the list for posting violations or users having problems, sending our warnings, and keeping the senior Admins abreast of any problems. Personally I don't really have time now to read each and every post to the list, so having these guys around is a great big help. We had an "Open Call" for applications to be one, and ended up picking 3 people from different parts of the planet - this means we can safely sleep while we know the Euro based flunky can keep his eye on things. ;)

Also, it's best to pick people who have been on the list a decent length of time, and who contribute positively - that way it's more likely that the people on the other end are going to listen to them and understand that they're not trying to be jerks, but they're trying to keep the list flowing smoothly.

I've probably forgotten a few things (Long posts first thing in the morning ;), so if you have questions, feel free. :-)

Adam

Try Listar

[Mark F. Komarinski]

It'll be hard to take care of big lengthy replies and things like that, but I've been doing some tinkering with Listar. Documentation is really spotty, but it appears to do things like strip out most attachments, and convert HTML attachements to plain text. There's also apparently a quoting limit (I haven't tested this).