620680 - Create Ground Rule for Changing the Forum of an Ongoing Discussion

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(mozilla.org :: Governance, task)

Description

[David E. Ross]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101123 SeaMonkey/2.0.11
Build Identifier: 

There should be a "Ground Rule" in the "Mozilla Forum Etiquette" that contains the following or something equivalent:

When using Followup-to or Reply-to fields to change in which forum a discussion should continue, you should always indicate that action in the body of the message.  It is never appropriate to change from a forum hosted by mozilla.org to a newsgroup not on the news.mozilla.org server or to an E-mail address that is not part of the Mozilla mailing lists.  


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[David E. Ross]

Regarding a notice in the body of a newsgroup message about using Followup-to to redirect a discussion to a different newsgroup, that is specified in RFC 1855 (Section 3.1.3), which is "Netiquette Guidelines".

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

David: are you noticing this as a common problem? I've not seen it myself...

Gerv

Comment 3

[David E. Ross]

Most recently, this has been a problem in the mozilla.support.thunderbird newsgroup.  Someone claiming to have the authority to do so has been setting Followup-to headers without indicating such in the body of his message.  He asserted that messages asking about possible RFEs are off-topic in mozilla.support.thunderbird, which is something I cannot find documented anywhere.  

Worse, that person has been setting Followup-to headers to a non-forum E-mail address instead of to another newsgroup, thereby blocking any further discussion of the topic in any venue.  This was discussed in the mozilla.general newsgroup (Subject "Moderation", thread start-date 21 December 2010, and in other threads in mozilla.general).

Comment 4

[jay garcia]

And it continues today, even moreso than ever before. Even the moderator doesn't add a followup comment in the message body. It's more than just common courtesy, it's a notice to the newbies where the discussion is continuing.

Comment 5

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

I'm sorry to say that the lack of notification of a follow-up header has been rising to a level of "purposeful deception"
I believe a general "governance" statement is needed in a policy statement.
(Please include mozilla,support.thunderbird if such a general policy statement is considered.)

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

We are managing OK without a formal policy here.

Gerv

Comment 7

[jay garcia]

So what you're saying Gerv, is that you approve of not finding the need to include the followup note in the body of the message.

Comment 8

[David E. Ross]

Someone continues to violate RFC 1855 (Section 3.1.3) in mozilla.support.thunderbird.  This might be happening in other news.mozilla.org newsgroups to which I am not subscribed.

Comment 9

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

We're not going to do anything to address that; it's not an important problem.

Comment 10

[jay garcia]

It's important to the integrity of Mozilla and the support team. But since it's not going to be addressed then we'll take it on a case by case as-is basis. Consider this case closed.

Comment 11

[David E. Ross]

From now on, when someone else sets Followup-to for a thread in mozilla.support.thunderbird to force continuation of that thread in mozilla.general without indicating the action in the body of the message containing the Followup-to header line -- thus violating RFC 1855 (Section 3.1.3) -- I will assume that I am free to ignore the Followup-to.  I will cite the closure of this bug report as justification for continuing that thread in mozilla.support.thunderbird and not in mozilla.general.