Re: Policy for posts from non-members

[Lukas-Fabian Moser]

Hi Jean,
> I've not been an admin of this list for very long, yet I'm already 
> weary of telling people who post without being subscribed to the list 
> that they should subscribe in order to avoid each of their messages 
> being manually approved. I wonder what you (meaning everyone, but 
> especially Mark, the other admin) would think about changing the list 
> configuration to reject post from non-members instead of holding them 
> on moderation, with a message such as
>
> “Welcome to the lilypond-user mailing list. We apologize, but in order 
> to prevent spam, we need you to subscribe to the list before you post. 
> Please fill out the subscription form on 
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user.
>
> Once you are subscribed, you will receive all posts to the list, so 
> you can help out other people as well. However, if you only wish to 
> interact with this list infrequently, you may disable mail 
> subscription in your membership preferences after you have subscribed.
>
> If you believe you are already subscribed to the list, it probably 
> means that you accidentally posted from a different email address than 
> the one you are subscribed with.
>
> If you have any question or encounter problems, feel free to contact 
> the list admins at lilypond-user-owner@gnu.org”
>
> On the plus side, this means that instead of delaying the message 
> until Mark or me looks at it, the feedback will come instantly.
I'm a bit late to the party, but nevertheless: I think I'm with Wol and 
Werner (and David K.?) here.

Of course, considering the unbelievable number of things you're 
contributing to LilyPond as a whole, you're perfectly free to design 
things in a fashion that is least cumbersome to you.

But I'm afraid a message like the one you proposed (although its wording 
is perfectly friendly and polite) will turn new users away, who just 
might say: Don't bother, I'll stick to MuseScore then. Mailing lists are 
old, yes (like Andrew said), but this does not mean that by now, 
everybody should be accustomed to them: It could just as well mean (and 
I think it does) that younger people are not acquainted with them anymore.

So, I think a better solution would be to keep things as they are, but 
let non-subscribed users automatically (if that's possible!) receive an 
e-mail saying:

- welcome
- you're not subscribed, so it might take longer until you get an 
answer, as your message has to be approved manually
- also, you might not see answers given to you, if somebody who helps 
you doesn't "reply to all" but sends his reply to the user list only.
- so you might just consider subscribing to the list, which you can do 
here: [link]

I don't think that this is would be a moral problem in the sense of a 
canned reply disguised as a human interaction. It would keep your 
moderation task to a mere minimum (namely, approving the message), but 
without giving the new users the feeling that their message has actually 
been rejected.

I've said this already, and I'm happy to say this again: To me, the 
LilyPond community is likely the most friendly, helpful place I've ever 
encountered on "the internet". We shouldn't erect too high a barrier to 
entering it, and for people who are not familiar (e.g.) with automatic 
e-mail filtering/sorting rules etc., I think subscribing to an e-mail 
list does look like a barrier: We should advertise doing it, but not 
force people contacting us for the first time to do it.

Lukas