Flamewars
Shortly before I moved to Cape Town, I joined the Cape Linux User Group mailing lists. I shall let the email I sent to the CLUG-chat list today speak for itself:

Good day all.

What I say in this mail may offend some people here.  However, I
believe it needs to be said and I have no desire to enter the
labyrinth that is "politically correct" phrasing.  All I ask is that
if you want to flame me, keep it off the list.

In the relatively short time I have been on the various CLUG lists, I
have noticed a disturbing propensity for flamewars to erupt over just
about anything.

There seem to be two opposing camps involved, which I shall categorise
according to their apparent beliefs:
 * Coddlers: "Let's coddle all the newbies in the hope that they
   become productive citizens."
 * LARTers: "Let's get rid of anyone who doesn't meet our unreasonably
   high standards."

I don't seriously think anyone here believes in either extremes.  On
the other hand, there are people on both sides who cannot agree on a
middle ground.  Thus, the flamewars continue.

If the Coddlers have their way, the list would soon be overrun by
people throwing badly formed questions around rather than doing the
most basic research.  This would drive away those who use the list as
it is meant to be used and the whole system would collapse.

If the LARTers have their way, the list would soon consist only the
LARTers themselves.  This would, again, drive away most of those who
use the list as it is meant to be used and the whole system would
collapse.

The way I see it, the flamewars do more to make the list appear
hostile to newbies than the LARTers would while making it almost as
unusable to those with more experience as the Coddlers would.

I suspect we are mostly reasonable people here.  The most recent
flamewar has been over two links which both contain fairly good
advice.  If we coddle the newbies somewhat by providing links to
relevant resources and instructions on how to follow list etiquette
and LART those who consistently fail to heed such gentle instruction,
we may end up with a list that works better than it does now.

Failing that, it may be necessary to get rid of the extremists on both
sides in the interests of the general membership of the list.  Or
perhaps just introduce some moderators with big sticks.

Thank you for your attention.

--J

I'm not sure that it will have the desired response of reducing the number of flames. Hopefully it will at least cause the offenders to look at their own behaviour a little more carefully. After the initial flame in my direction, of course.

Since I sent it, I have only had one response pointing out that the list moderators *did* reply to various offending messages. To which my reply was to point out the "big sticks" part of the comment.

Anyways, back to work.