[Asterisk-Users] Enhancing list quality?

[Patrick]

Hi all,

Following up on Steve Szmidt's post, have we come to a point where
something should be done about the deteriorating signal to noise ratio
on the asterisk-users list?

Similar to other fast growing successful FOSS projects/communities, the
Asterisk community is no exception when it comes to growing pains.
Anyone who has been subscribed for quite some time surely has noticed:

* the lazy top posting
* asking too simple/obvious questions that are found on voip-info.org,
  the list archives, google and the docs that comes with the source
* asking totally unrelated questions (the Sparco example)
* asking why it doesn't work without giving any config info
* the GPL license, Windoze vs. Linux, "You are clueless! No you are!"
  discussions/flame wars that go on and on and on
* the lack of proper trimming of posts
* the html email sent time after time in spite of requests to 
  turn it off
* the huge signatures that imho are a form of spam or just a waste of
  bandwidth

Some suggestions to hopefully improve things:

1) change the "Welcome to the asterisk-users list" email to contain:

- before sending email to more than 8000 people, search voip-info.org,
  the mailing list archives, google and the docs in the source
- do not top post
- add as much config info as possible
- trim long posts (especially unnecessary sigs)
- posts should be related to Asterisk
- be nice, polite, courteous. keep flames off list
- your sig should not be a billboard for your products/services (spam)
  if you want to advertise your services, use asterisk-biz
- do not send html mail to the list. It will get rejected or bounced
  or whatever (see item 3)
- do not use unnecessary capitals, exclamation marks and question
  marks (don't be loud)
- do not mail questions to asterisk-dev that are not related to the
  actual development of asterisk
- do not crosspost your question to asterisk-users and asterisk-dev
- do not resend your email after 4 hours because you have not
  received an answer. Join #asterisk on Freenode irc if you require a
  possibly speedier answer

2) post this info periodically to the list to remind people

3) strip all html or bounce it back to the sender telling them to send
   normal email, not html email. Add the list's netiquette too, just to
   make sure. Afaik mailman is capable of stripping html from email

4) ask the community to respond to people ignoring these reasonable
   requests and gently point them in the right direction

Feedback welcome.

Regards,
Patrick