[governance] New membership database: choose your own username

[Norbert Bollow]

Dear all
  Having just yesterday re-subscribed to this list after a long
absence (the absence was due to time constraints, not for reasons
of any kind of disagreement), here are a few comments from my
perspective:

Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
> On 04/01/2011, at 2:28 PM, Avri Doria wrote:
> 
> > I think this is a severe change that needs to be undone. I also do
> > not think this is the kind of change that co-coordinators should
> > be making unilaterally,
> 
> Well, I don't agree that any severe change has been made.  The list
> is still open, it's just the means of subscribing has changed.

I would agree with Avri that it's a severe change that apparantly
now subscription requests have to be approved manually, even if
the policy is to accept all subscription requests.

Reading the message that my account would have to be approved made
me wonder how long it would take for anyone to get around to doing
that... it reminded me of another list where I had subscribed some
time back where manual approval of subscription requests was required,
and where it took the list administrator literally months to get
around to processing the subscription request. In fact, together with
the fact that the wiki was totally empty, it made me wonder whether
the IGC was still alive.

I don't think that this is the kind of things that we'd want new
subscribers to think about initally.

> If enough people agree with you and disagree with me, then I can
> re-enable subscriptions via email and via the old Web page.
> However, we will then lose a lot of the benefits of having a single
> subscription page to both the list and the Web resources.

I think that it's quite acceptable to use a web-based subscription
interface.

However, the List-Subscribe: header should be fixed to point to
the correct URI rather than to Sympa's email interface. Also the
message from Sympa to people trying to use the email interface
should be fixed to refer people to the web interface instead of
giving the wrong and misleading and in a way even insulting message
"You are not allowed to subscribe to this list."

> > I am also very uneasy with the way you are changing what it means
> > to be a member of the IGC.
> 
> I am not doing that at all.
> 
> > And with the way you are terming those who participate in the list
> > passively as lurkers
> 
> That is a value-neutral term, as far as I use it.  But I've
> apologised if anyone was offended by use of that term.

I agree with Jeremy that at least among people who are experienced
in using email lists, it'a totally value-neutral term.

However, the term is likely to be misunderstood by people who do
not come with a good working knowledge of "mailing list jargon".

Therefore, in my opinion, if we're going to use this word, it
would be important to at least explain its meaning in a "welcome
message" that is emailed to new subscribers, together with the
clarification that "lurking" on email lists is quite acceptable
behavior, and in fact it is what most active mailing list users
do most of the time on most of the lists to which they subscribe.

Greetings,
Norbert
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