On February 26, 2020 3:05:22 PM UTC, Charles Plessy <ple...@debian.org> wrote:
>
>I sometimes wonder if adding a random delay of 1 to 24 h for every
>message (I mean: rolling the dice again for each message) on -project,
>-devel, -vote and similar lists could help to make us more resilient to
>trolling and at the same time more likely to have more constructive
>discussions.
An interesting idea, but I fear it'd also lead to a lot of confusion. Delays
would only apply to copies going through the list, in particular CCs to
personal addresses would arrive immediately. Which means the people cc'd would
get an early chance to reply (probably encouraging use of CCs). And those
replies get sent to the list, also with a random delay, which could turn out to
be shorter than the original message. That is, the reply could be "posted"
before the replied-to.
There would also be weird things like posts showing up past deadlines. If you
want to be sure your post arrives by the end of the discussion period, need to
send it 24h early.
Making the list digest-only would accomplish some of the same things. (With all
the well-known advantages and disadvantages of email digests, of course).
