Re: More list fun, from your friend in hell

[Francis Hsu <francis@ai.mit.edu>]

I can certainly understand a desire to have a document policy and/or list
charter.  They are helpful for new people to get an idea of what to expect
when they join the list.

That being said, I personally find a documented policy to be generally
useless.  The maintainer will ultimately get flamed by some for not
adequately enforcing the policy, or for being unfair when enforcing, etc.
People will then bicker about the details/interpretation of the policy, what
constitutes personal attacks, spam, advertising, etc.. all to the detriment
of the list.  This can be worse for the maintainer than getting flamed for
not having a policy at all.

Some people will push the envelope and see what they can get away
with.  What those people usually discover is that when they start getting
in the grey area, the maintainer is (hopefully) not going to lose sleep
debating with him/herself whether the line has truly been crossed, or have
a guilty conscience making a decision to enforce with a ban, etc.  Instead,
it will depend on things like whether you annoy the maintainer, or what their
mood happens to be at the time they are reading your message.

Personally, I feel that for this particular list, where the maintainer is
not making a profit or running it for business purposes, having an
official policy would have limited usefulness at best.  I certainly feel
no urge to beg Paul for one.  Heck, I'm ecstatic just by the fact that I
can view the archives with my Web browser and not see a single banner
advertisement!

Francis