Rapid fire responses

[elear]

Unprofessional behavior means inundating a large number of people with a large number of messages in a short period of time. These sorts of rapid-fire responses are generally not well considered, especially if they are heated.

Advice should be given to the community as a whole that when conversations are heated, people should avoid such rapid-fire responses, pause, and reflect on the conversation, and then respond, if one feels the need.

[ekr]

+1. I would even be in favor of allowing the SAA to rate limit people

[sayrer]

Some considerations here:

1. batching responses seems ok (e.g., sending 8 replies together, once a week). this is inundation in some sense, but it seems fine.

2. rapid replies are often replies to messages that are inflammatory, and so these kinds of responses may not be the root cause of the problem.

[elear]

Robert, regarding point 2 you raise, you may well be right. My point, tho, is that anger can pass. Rate limiting can provide participants with a breather to let that happen. But it may not in some cases.

[sayrer]

I think another idea might be to have the SAAs suggest taking the conversation somewhere else, public or private. A list with fewer members, jabber, a private thread, etc.

[elear]

Yes, but that trick never works.

[sayrer]

Well, it might work if the threat of rate-limiting were on the table as a next step. Or, the SAA could move it somewhere else by fiat, and tell the list. I think that's better than rate-limiting in average cases, because it does advertise where to keep reading if you care, and it doesn't silence anyone or end the thread. :)

While we're on the topic of "rapid fire responses", I might also add that long screeds can be similarly disrespectful of others' time. The good old "weekly posting summary" from narten does list messages by bytes as well.

[jaredmauch]

I think there's a challenge here with people batching e-mails.