Main List Problems - new problem identified

[Judy]

I know that I'm late on responding to this, but I wanted to give
some more information on what the HPfGU list elves do, and why
we've been so swamped. 

Grey Wolf said:
>>>>Pendings are tying up most of the elves's time, and is serving no
purpose. The intention of pendings was to stop people from breaking
the rules, but the rules are being broken anyway. The way I understand
it, not all of the people blatantly breaking the rules in the main
list can be unmoderated. Some must be moderated, and their low-quality
posts are getting through. <<<<

Very few problem posts get through pendings. [For anyone who doesn't
know, new members at HPfGU start off on "moderated status", where all
of their posts must be reviewed before being forwarded to the list. 
The place where new members messages wait to be reviewed is called the
"pendings queue," and the messages to be reviewed as called
"pendings."]  You can check for yourself that most problem posts come
from unmoderated members. If you click on "view source" on a post in
webview, it will tell you if the post was approved or not.  (The name
of the elf who approved the post, if any, will be shortly about the
actual message text.)  If the post was not approved, that means the
member is unmoderated.  (If you see problems posts that were
moderated, feel free to drop us an email and let us know!) 

 Just because a member has been around for a while, doesn't
necessarily mean that member follows the rules.  So, I disagree with
your claim, Grey Wolf, that moderators would not be needed on the main
list if we had separate list for newbies.  If the problem were just
with the new members, we would have been able to fix it already. 

 A big part of the problem is that sloppiness is contagious.  When
members see someone else not snipping and so forth, some of them start
to feel that they can do it, too. No question, we need to fix this
ASAP. 

As for pendings serving no purpose, let me tell you that these days,
most pending messages are either rejected or edited (usually for
snipping) before being allowed on the main list.   So, if we let new
members post without having their posts reviewed first, we'd have a
lot more posts that really break the rules.  Also, it's not clear how
new members would even learn the rules.  A lot of new members just
don't seem to pick up the rules by reading them.  If we don't tell
them exactly what they are doing wrong, they won't change.  This is
one of the reasons why doing pendings takes so long -- each time a
message breaks one or more rules (which is most pending messages) the
elf has to send an email to the new member, explaining what needs to
be changed. 


Cindy said, regarding when she was a Mod:
>>>On a busy day, I might check the pending messages section and find
eight messages -- many days there would only be two or three when I
checked in. If there were eight, I'd roll my eyes and dive in, and it
might take 30 minutes just to handle those pending messages. Handling
eight, I believed, was a lot of work. 
I have heard that pending messages activity is through the roof now --
there are sometimes over 50 pending messages at one time. This means
that some list administrators are probably killing themselves to keep
up, which leads to burn out, errors and long delays before approved
messages hit the list. This cannot be any fun. <<<

Let me add that Cindy was amazingly efficient at doing pendings and
that I consider doing 8 in 30 minutes to be fast.  And yes, we now
sometimes have 50 or more messages pending.  I've done 52 in a row by
myself, and I know I'm not the only elf who has done this many in one
go.  This meant sending something like 30 messages to newbies, each
one explaining how their post needed to be modified.  It also meant
recording the names of the 22 or so good posters, so they could get
credit towards "graduating" from moderated status.   

So, pendings overload is a main reason why we are having trouble
dealing with problem posts by established members, and why so few of
the elves post on the main list these days.   It is also why any
solution that requires more messages to go through pendings isn't
going to work.  In other words, ideas such as having all messages go
through review by elves, or keeping new members on moderated status
for a longer time, aren't practical because they require just too much
work, even if the pool of elves were expanded.

Cindy gave a good description of how new members get off of "moderated
status" in post 17595.  The system still works pretty much the
same as
she described it, except that we now have a provision aimed at getting
members off moderated status after three days of good posts, if none
of those posts had any problems at all.  

Joywitch said:
>>> Are there list policing responsibilities that non-Admin Team
members could do that might help? I occasionally send offlists to
people answering informational questions. Would you like non-Admin
team members to engage in more offlisting to answer questions, provide
helpful suggestions, etc.? <<<

Yes, there are.  One of the elves (Ali, maybe?) recently suggested
here that members should email the List Admins to tell us of bad
posts, and some of the members here have also said they would like to
do this..  In fact, we are thinking of formalizing this system
--recruiting list members to read all the posts on the main list, and
report back on the ones that break the rules.  Then, one of the elves
could email the rule breaker, and repeat offenders would be put back
on moderated status.

While we are working on such a system, list members can just go ahead
and do this informally.  Say that you happen to go to the main list
and read the most recent 40 posts.  You notice that 10 of these posts
have serious problems.  Send us an email saying "I read posts #786586
through #786626, and found that the following posts had problems." 
Then, give us a list of the problem posts, and what was wrong with
them. You don't have to say much -- just "Post #786586, snipping. 
Post #786589, rude.  Post #786601, one-liner."  (I am deliberately
avoiding using real post numbers, to avoid casting aspersions on any
actual posts.)   This would really help.  The address is
HPforGrownups-owner@ yahoogroups.com (omit the space.)  I see that
Kathryn Wolber just sent us an email about some one-liners she found
-- thanks, Kathryn!

Providing helpful suggestions or answering factual questions is great.
 However, Kathryn Wolber wondered:
>>>  Alot of people have said veteran members could e-mail rule
breaking newbies offlist with a friendly reminder.  My question is, if
I did that and someone took it not so kindly could I get in any kind
of trouble with the list?<<<

I think that if you were polite and the recipient were just being
unreasonable, then no, you would not be in any trouble.   However, it
really requires diplomacy to tell someone that they have broken the
rules without offending them. It is very easy for this sort of thing
to devolve into a flame war. In fact, the elves are thinking of having
just a few elves designated to send this sort of email, so as to give
the task to the elves that are best at being diplomatic.  So, it's
certainly OK to volunteer answers to questions, tell people where to
find information, and so forth.  But, if someone is driving you crazy,
I think it would be better to tell the elves, rather than trying to
handle it yourself.  Also, if the elves are told, they can put the
person back on mod status if the problem continues. 

In terms of other suggestions, how do people feel about closing the
main list for a week?  I think Rita the Catlady is right that it might
be the only way to get the attention of some of the rulebreakers.   I
don't think that it would be enough by itself, though, to really
address the main list's problems. 

Hmmm
 lots of interesting ideas have been proposed here!   Thanks
to everyone who has made suggestions.  Also, a big "You're Welcome" to
those who have thanked the list admins!

In terms of what else individual members can do right now, please keep
presenting your suggestions, either here or via email to the elves.  
  I also liked a lot of Steve's ideas  (post #17953.) 

-- Judy Serenity