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CentOS Mailing Lists Policy

1. Administration & List Management

The CentOS localized lists are unmoderated. Typically posting will be restricted to members only, however the administrators may choose to accept submissions from non-members based on individual merit and relevance.

It is expected that all CentOS lists will be largely self-policing, however in special circumstances (eg spamming, misappropriation, disruptive behavior) offending members might be removed from or restricted from posting to a given list by a list administrator.

It is important that the list administrator understands the CentOS teams' goals and philosophies.

If a list administrator is unsure about something, they should ask for help on IRC (#centos-devel on freenode) or centos-devel mailing list. List administrators are expected to be subscribed to, and follow the centos and centos-devel lists.

List administrators are supposed to do membership management, despam the lists, and tend to moderation requests which Mailman sends to them. Technical offlist questions about the list itself may be answered as the administrator finds it to be convenient, but it is a perfectly reasonable response to refer the inquiring party to CentOS web resources, or to the proper mailing list.

As the list administrator is the link between the localized list and the rest of CentOS, list administrators should have reasonable English language skills.

List administrators are automatically subscribed to the centos-moderators list, where policy questions, vacations (and standbys for such vacations) and other issues about moderating the mailing lists are to be discussed.

2. Acceptable Content

• Information regarding CentOS
• Questions and answers about how to install, use and/or manage a CentOS machine
• Hardware questions related to CentOS
• Where to find CentOS related services (answers only, no advertising)
• Information regarding the CentOS project, including announcements of any kind provided by an official CentOS representative, or someone appointed by one
• Discussions about local (if possible) CentOS related activities
• Content shouldn't stray too much off topic.
• Cross-posting is actively discouraged.

3. Posting Guidelines

The primary language of each list will be specific and defined on the list information page. Besides that, posts can be partially written in english, as long as the use of that language is justified. Members are expected to maintain a reasonable standard of netiquette when posting to the list.

Trim! Quoting should not exceed that which is necessary to convey context. This is especially relevant to members subscribed to the digested version of the list.

The use of HTML is strongly discouraged. Signatures should preferably be short and to the point, and those containing 'disclaimers' should be avoided where possible.

Attachments should be avoided. It's better to put it on the interweb and provide a link URL from which it might be retrieved. Some (all?) lists are configured to automatically discard attachments.

Vacation messages, and other automatic replies, should be carefully configured by both list members and particularly list administrators to avoid replying to list postings. Offenders may be excluded from posting rights to the mailing list until the problem is corrected.

It is the expectation that list members will not cross-post the same content to more than one mailing list, whether both are CentOS lists, or a mixture of those from CentOS and another project. Again, offenders may be excluded from posting rights to the mailing list.

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I'll leave the discussion part open for a short while, in case something has been overlooked (RalphAngenendt)

Discussion

• I'd suggest disallowing HTML e-mail, because they are often unreadable for those of us who regularly use text clients. (DanielDeKok)

  • I don't think that that's feasible, as much as I'd like to see it. I put a "strongly" in front of the discouraged.
  • Often times html emails have the gist as text at the top ...
  • I hate HTML e-mail as much as the next guy, but you can configure Mutt to display them easily enough. The main point is that they have too many bytes for too little text (Rodrigo)
• Should those be language specific lists or regional lists?
  • German is easy: Region and language are falling closely together (2 countries with German as the primary language, two countries with regional use of the language, all somehow bordering with the next one)
  • But, for example, portuguese and spanish are spread all over the world.
  • Should local announcements be tagged with [LOCAL]? (this also can only be wishful thinking, but ...)
    • I think this kind of rule should be left to the moderator to decide. It might be a good idea on some of the lists, while not on others. (Rodrigo)
  • So long as folk can understand the language there should only be one list - dont forget English is used all around the world but we only have one list as the CentOS problems faced tend to be universal.
  • pt_PT and pt_BR are almost as different as two different languages. (Rodrigo)
  • es_* : Spanish is understood no matter where the speaker and the reader/listener are from. Using a single list for the Spanish speaking countries is ok for sure (Ernesto)
• Banishment of Off-Topic content could also be a wish, but looking at the main list ...
  • That is up to the administrators
• How much of the list management is going to be delegated to individual list administrators ?
  • the CentOS List Master must always have the final say in things...
    • This should be done very carefully. If the administrator loses face in front of the list subscribers, we can get chaos. I'm not questioning the "if", but the "how" on this one. Sometimes it might be better replacing a moderator than correcting something he did. (Rodrigo)
    • And: I won't be able to have a final say on a spanish or portuguese list, as I haven't the faintest ideas about those languages ...
  • Despamming/Clearing held or deferred posts should be done by someone speaking the language (is it spam or just a misguided mail?).
  • For some languages, Chinese, cyrillic etc everything would need to be delegated ...
• Do we also need a policy on list administrators / managers recruitment ?
  • We do, they need to be folk who are known to CentOS core team, or pillars of their CentOS regional community, that become known.
  • This should go without saying, but it doesn't hurt to stress out: localized lists administrators SHOULD have good english skills, since they are ultimately the bridge between the local list and the CentOS core team. (Rodrigo)

  • Here is a new rule for administrators: they MUST be subscribed to the centos and centos-devel lists. (Rodrigo)

    • Here is a change to that new rule: Administrators must subscribe to and follow centos-moderators, for policy-questions, "away messages" and so on. They should read one of the aforementioned two lists.

  • How do we deal with long duration AFKs of list moderators (e.g. work trips, holidays)? (Daniel)
    • The administrator should be responsible enough to either get access during the trips or to leave someone in his place. (Rodrigo)