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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Trouble Brews With Ubuntu Users Mailing List

  • Written by The VAR Guy 1
  • June 10, 2009

Abuse. Intimidation. And support. You can find all that and more on the Ubuntu Users mailing list. An official support channel, the mailing list is where new users are directed by Canonical for technical support and discussions about new features and ideas. But there are some key problems with the mailing list.

In the past few months, I believe there have been unacceptable comments posted — directed at peoples’ race, gender, sexual orientation and nationality. There’s no moderation and no consequences to stop people from repeating their offenses.

Mailing List Etiquette

Users are asked to comply with the mailing list etiquette of:

  • Observe the Ubuntu code of conduct
  • Before writing an email, consider whether it will further a discussion which is relevant for the particular mailing list

One thing is for sure: A lot of emails sent to the list that do not further a relevant discussion.

There are also guidelines for formatting messages such as trimming quotations, not writing a reply at the top your message (so called ‘top posting’) and sending messages to the list in plain text.

It’s very easy to forget these guidelines when posting to the list; I’ve top posted and sent html email to the list unintentionally on occasion. Hopefully I didn’t offend anyone too much. I like to think that the technical content of my contributions negate any ill feeling over the occasional slip up with etiquette.

Code of Conduct

Still, some recent comments posted to the list have been well out of bounds of the Ubuntu code of conduct. According to the Ubuntu website the code of conduct governs all interaction with the Ubuntu community. Fundamental aspects include:

  • Be considerate
  • Be respectful
  • Be collaborative
  • When you disagree, consult others
  • When you are unsure, ask for help
  • Step down considerately
  • Avoid flamewars, trolling, personal attacks, and repetitive arguments

Users are only asked to read through the code of conduct, and bear it in mind when posting. But nobody enforces the code of conduct.

An Ubuntu MOTU (Master of the Universe) recently stepped in to remind list members of the code of conduct and list etiquette. But the MOTU conceded that the persons currently running the list do not have ample resources to actively monitor every single post.

After considerable discussion with administrators, a governance team consisting of participating list members needed to be put in place. This lead to a discussion thread that lasted three weeks — but the effort seems to have all but fizzled out with no decisions being made and no requirements for the governance team agreed upon.

Still No Solution

Clearly this proves the point that list members are not capable of agreeing upon a workable solution and are not capable of self governance without the oversight of someone with authority for the list (a list owner or admin). A governance team with authority to warn and ultimately even ban persistent offenders is necessary.

It’s time for the Ubuntu community and Canonical to come up with a solution to the list abuse. Many websites archive the mailing list for future reference. The result: Past comments may haunt Ubuntu users for years to come.

Follow WorksWithU via Identi.ca, Twitter and RSS (available now) and our newsletter (coming soon).

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Open Source

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19 comments

  1. Avatar Ugh June 11, 2009 @ 9:19 am
    Reply

    People really need to get over the HTML mail and top posting thing. Both are perfectly legitimate. It’s almost 2010, guys, stop being petty little tyrants.

    This is one of the many reasons why I hate mailing lists.

  2. Avatar Tim June 11, 2009 @ 9:55 am
    Reply

    I is really time that something like Google wave replaces comments, forums, wikis and email.

    With a public wave list you could have a digg-like system where users mark good answers and bury flames and insults.
    That would also vastly reduce the noise and increase productivity.

    It may be a little more complex, but the benefits vastly outweigh the initial learning effort.

  3. Avatar furicle June 11, 2009 @ 11:56 am
    Reply

    As someone who has spent time on that list – I think you are overhyping things. Yes, there have been some questionable posts. Yes, there have been a few trolls, and at least one person who seems to frustrate everyone without being offensive.

    The reason that discussion ‘fizzled out’ is that more people expressed the opinion that moderation was not wanted or not needed, than people who wanted a governance team.

    Overall the tone of the list isn’t any different than the forums, or many other larger FL/OSS lists. People are people….

  4. Avatar p.daniels June 11, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
    Reply

    @Guy: It would help if you provided even one link to one message. I’m not saying “you’re making this up,” I’m saying “I have no way of knowing if you’re making this up.”

    @Ugh: “People really need to get over the HTML mail and top posting thing. Both are perfectly legitimate.”

    No. No they’re not.

    1. Why is HTML mail unacceptable? Because lots of people read their mail in lots of ways, and I’m not just talking about weirdos using pine. For a long time there was a bug that made HTML mail render improperly in KMail, for instance. Not everyone reads their mail on the Gmail webpage.

    2. Because it’s confusing.
    gt; Why is top-posting unacceptable?

    -pete

  5. Avatar Peter June 11, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
    Reply

    It’s a natural thing happening, it’s bad but still natural since nobody is moderating it. It’s naive thinking that among Linux users there are no skunks and idiots. Reason and cause, not much of a news me thinks.

  6. Avatar Leo June 12, 2009 @ 8:50 am
    Reply

    I think overzealous moderation is bad. Patronizing and bugging people is bad. But it would be nice to have a democratically elected body of people who can discuss extreme cases and ultimately disallow accounts from people who come for obvious spamming and/or obviously using the list to display racism.

    Imaging someone sends an email saying: “All [anyRaceHere] are a dirty piece of f**** dirt”. That’s the message. Someone should have the authority to block that account and IP.

    HTML is evil, think of people reading email on a phone, people reading email on a terminal because their X is dead and are trying to get back to graphics mode, etc. But this would be better off handled by the mailing-list server. Just bounce off any non-ascii message. Or convert it to plain text. Things that can be enforced systematically, should. This is way, way preferable.

  7. Avatar kb0hae June 12, 2009 @ 11:40 am
    Reply

    First of all, Top Posting is NOT confusing. It is the least annoying way of replying, and reading replies. If yoiu don’t like it, GET OVER IT! Far too many people use webmail when they have a perfectly acceptable email account with their ISP. Why? Pure laziness. Webbased email accounts should only be used as a backup/throw-away account, not as a primary email account. And HTML needs to be banned from ALL email! It is unnecessary, and extremely annoying

  8. Avatar Leo June 12, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
    Reply

    @kb0hae : I guess the issue brought up here is that there _is_ a guideline regarding top posting, and people are not following it.

    In my opinion, guidelines are hard to impose, you need a few clear rules, and enforce them (if possible, automatically, like I was suggesting with the HTML format)

  9. Avatar aikiwolfie June 12, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
    Reply

    LOL … This is ridiculous. HTML? “Top Posting”? As the first respondent pointed out. This is nearly 2010!!!

    Personally when I reply to an e-mail. My reply goes to the “top”. Everybody that replies to my e-mails puts their replies to the “top”. Which now that I think about it is the way it’s done at work as well.

    I’d instantly be in deep geek trouble if I ever contributed to one of these mailing lists. Maybe this is what is holding Linux back. Not “top posting”. But stupid fights between geeks over how to format an “e-mail”! Seriously, there are bigger problems in the Linux world.

  10. Avatar RTFM June 13, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
    Reply

    “I guess the issue brought up here is that there _is_ a guideline regarding top posting, and people are not following it.”

    WHO CARES?

    It’s a completely pointless guideline that exists only so that armchair cops have an excuse to stroke their egos at the newcomer’s expense. Anyone with three brain cells can deduce the order of the conversation. People just argue about it because they’re dicks.

    Modern email clients hide the previous quotes anyway, threading everything in chronological order. How many decades has it been since Usenet was created, and people are still arguing about this? Adapt technology to fit human behavior; don’t try to force humans to adapt an unnatural style to suit some obsolete technology. In 2001, we were supposed to have (homicidal) computers capable of perfect speech and voice recognition. 8 years later and people are still arguing about the best way to format messages in a plain text medium…

    This is exactly the sort of idiocy that prevents Linux from being anything more than a toy for arrogant nerds.

    You know, maybe that top posting signature has a point. Maybe top-posting IS confusing… Maybe mailing lists are just populated with morons.

  11. Avatar Guy Thouret June 14, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
    Reply

    @p.daniels:
    This particular long thread immediately comes to mind:
    https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2009-May/182810.html

  12. Avatar anon June 17, 2009 @ 6:40 am
    Reply

    I cannot believe people still advocate top posting!

    Yes, you can figure out what the order of posting might be (some of the time), but top posting absolutely goes against the way people read: down the page!

    Just because email clients default to posting above quotations doesn’t mean you should use it in that way. I think that behaviour started with Outlook or Outlook Express, hardly bastions of sensible computing.

    What I find funny is that it’s nearly 2010 and people still cannot come up with a justification for top posting though that cannot hide their laziness, arrogance and ignorance.

  13. Avatar sum June 18, 2009 @ 6:33 am
    Reply

    @anon

    There are valid use cases for top posting though none that you would not be able to trash into one of “laziness, arrogance and ignorance”. In a long discussion some like to see the most relevant/recent replies nearer to the top and not the bottom to get the latest context quickly.

  14. Avatar Mamarok June 20, 2009 @ 5:32 am
    Reply

    @sum: well, if the guidelines are followed, you don’t have to scroll hundreds of lines but the text is trimmed and you only have the quoted text and the answer to that part.
    But it seems we digress, there is more than “do not top post, do not use HTML” in the guidelines, and the breach of the Code of Conduct is the main issue here.

  15. Avatar RTFM June 20, 2009 @ 11:10 am
    Reply

    No one with a modern email client has to scroll, no matter what style the poster used. I can’t believe people still try to argue against top posting, while gt;90% of their fellow humans happily use it. Some nerds at Mozilla tried to make bottom posting the default in Thunderbird (following the nerd myth that people only top post because of the default cursor position) and there was justified outrage from all the normal people who post normally.

    And HTML email is much better than plain text. Quoted text shows up in clearly-delimited blocks, with natural word wrap instead of archaic forced 72 character breaks, text can be emphasized, put in bullet points, switched between proportional and fixed-width font blocks. Anyone who advocates against HTML email in the year 2009 is a moron. Should we make the Web plain text, too? “Yes! It’s sooo much more efficient!!1”

    Even the author of “Why HTML in E-Mail A Bad Idea” got over it: http://birdhouse.org/blog/2006/01/15/html-email-the-poll/ You should, too.

  16. Avatar kunleoyetunji2002 July 13, 2009 @ 8:04 am
    Reply

    tried to install ns-2.33 on kubuntu 7.10 for weeks but could not. please help …….

  17. Avatar sarah lightstorm July 31, 2009 @ 9:24 am
    Reply

    I hate bottom posting messages. I use thunderbird and have to change it to top post everytime I install. Why would you continue to reply to a message when you have to scroll through 50 previous replies you already read to get to the newest one. Everyone that has been following the thread can just open it and see the newest message right away. And people new to the thread can scroll back a ways to get caught up.

  18. Avatar Jef Spaleta July 31, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
    Reply

    sarah:

    All depends on how you view the flow of conversation and how we attempt to convert asynchronous multi-participant email conversations back into the more natural real-time conversations.

    Top posting can be very confusing if you are replying to a specific point in a longer thread..several days later. In normal conversation, you would be inclined to interject and stop the original speaker soon after the comment was made and you would want to comment on was spoken. Email doesn’t easily allow for this. Especially when the email conversation is on a mailinglist where the conversation is not blocking on you to reply back and just keeps rolling along. This differs from personal or work email where the discussion typically is blocking on you to respond.

    You also have to realize that common mailinglists management software like listman offer digest formats which are not threaded. These are still used by people and these digest formats break the threading hints which your preferred top-posting policy implicitly relies on. I would encourage you to sign up for a mailinglist and subscribe only to the daily digest format and see if top-posting feels more readable to you.

    The underlying problem is leaving the entire original post as quoted text. It seems like a good idea…but is horrible for mailinglists readability. Its appropriate for personal or work email that is not publicly archived. In a publicly archived mailinglist, what is quoted should be contextually relevant to your reply. If 90% of the original email doesn’t apply to your reply..don’t include it either at the top or at the bottom in a publicly archived list. The original is archived you don’t need to include the full email for reference. The rules for personal correspondence are different because there’s no publicly archived record.

    -jef

  19. Avatar work from home online jobs October 2, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
    Reply

    Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

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