Proposal for WPA-L Changes: Guidelines, Moderation Board, and Possible Name Change


In this proposal, we provide the following:

  1. Rationale
  2. Procedure
  3. Moderation Board and Responsibilities/Guidelines
  4. Community Guidelines
  5. Relocation/Archiving with Colorado State University/WAC Clearinghouse
  6. Renaming WPA-L
  7. Process of adoption
  8. Working Group Members

Rationale

This proposal to relocate the Writing Program Administration Listserv (WPA-L) and establish a moderation board and set of community guidelines was created in response to several recent discussions on WPA-L that led to damaging, harmful, and threatening responses, driving many to unsubscribe from the WPA-L and urging others to create other venues of communication. One such discussion led to a group of graduate students crafting a document that detailed some best practices for online interactions on the WPA-L. We are drawing heavily from that document in this proposal.

This proposal comes at a kairotic moment, as the current WPA-L owner/administrator, Barry Maid, prepares to step down as full-time faculty at Arizona State University, WPA-L’s current institutional home, and would like to find WPA-L and its archives a new institutional home. At its current institutional home, WPA-L no longer receives strong technical support, and does not allow for administration by individuals from different institutions.

Rather than signaling the end of WPA-L, these circumstances led the authors of this proposal to seek to preserve what makes WPA-L a powerful resource while envisioning it as a more justice-centered environment that is more responsive in recognizing behavior that is either implicitly or explicitly harmful by establishing for all of our members a shared set of values for online communication.

Our ultimate goal is to cultivate and sustain an environment that encourages all, especially vulnerable minorities, to not only be listened to but also heard. We condemn racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, ageism, and xenophobia, and we hope our community works to do better and be better to address these issues, behaviors, and ways of thinking.

We believe WPA-L has served a unique function that should be preserved as we reimagine its name, location, and expectations for participation. WPA-L has historically offered many subscribers a place for community, career building, and problem solving. It has afforded an opportunity to interact with a wide range of diverse subscribers--each from different phases of their career, different institutions, subfields of writing and rhetorical studies, etc. It provides a unique space for folks to interact across the field. For this reason, WPA-L should continue to serve as a valuable resource alongside other lists, e.g. NextGEN, CWPA POC Caucus, and TYCA/Two-year College, that serve special interest groups. It is our goal to sustain and encourage the wonderful work and interactions that happen on the list while openly recognizing and addressing the real concerns that have emerged over time.

Process Background

In the spring, following a series of discussions on the list, a group of interested subscribers began developing a crowd-sourced draft of participation guidelines. Emerging from this work was the formation of a working group to discuss a more formal development process of guidelines, gathering subscriber feedback to a proposal, and a process for upholding the community standards. Over the last two months, the working group members proceeded as follows:

  • Continued to finalize the participation guidelines
  • Discussed, vetted, gather feedback, and revised the guidelines
  • Created a rationale to present to the WPA list
  • Developed a survey mechanism to gather feedback

Moderation Board and Responsibilities

We propose the formation of a Moderation Board for WPA-L, which would allow for a more democratic and community-responsive process for administering the list by distributing administrative responsibilities among a larger group of subscribers, and instituting a process by which community guidelines could be established, upheld, and updated over time. By “moderation,” we do not mean that every post would need to be "approved" by a moderator, but that a greater number of individuals would have the capability to uphold community guidelines.

Staffing the Moderation Board

There are about 50 people who have volunteered to serve on the moderation board of the “new” WPA-L listserv, should the community support this option. Though we have not yet identified a specific process that we would use to select or appoint the board, we imagine that more details could be determined. Preliminarily, we imagine that the Board could be identified either as volunteers from the current list or elected for staggered terms of 2 years. The responsibility of the board members would be remaining responsive to community concerns about particular posts. Posted with the community guidelines would be a google form or other survey mechanism be created (a form, for instance) where subscribers could submit concerns or identify problematic posts. The goal would be to maintain a community-based problem solving approach. Moderators would be expected to subscribe to the list in full (not digest) and keep up with the conversations as well as respond promptly to concerns submitted to the board.

Board Member Responsibilities

  1. Assist the list owner/administrator with subscription management.
  2. Respond to emails from the owner/administrator, board members, and subscribers regarding potential violations of community guidelines.
  3. Participate in discussions with other board members to determine the nature of such violations and follow procedures spelled out below.
  4. Maintain community guidelines in a location accessible to all community members.
  5. Hold elections for the replacement of board members and adoption of amendments to community guidelines.
  6. Engage in additional responsibilities as they emerge with the primary goal of ensuring the participation guidelines of the WPA-L are upheld.

Upholding Community Guidelines

In the case that a list subscriber violates community guidelines, the moderation board would take the following steps:

  1. Consult as a group of at least 7 members, at least 4 of whom must make a determination of whether a subscriber has violated community guidelines.
  2. Reach out to the subscriber by email, indicating that they have violated community guidelines, and clearly but courteously identifying the nature of the violation
  3. Maintain a document shard among board members that identifies subscribers who violate community guidelines, the nature of the violation, and the number of violations per subscriber
  4. Following the determination of 3 violations by a subscriber, moderate the subscriber’s posts for a period up to 1 year.
  5. Review moderated subscribers list annually to identify subscribers to whom full privileges should be restored, given no new violations for a period of 1 year.
  6. Unsubscribe the individual if additional violations are committed within or after the initial period of moderation. Suspension will last one year.

Relocating WPA-L to Colorado State University

In April 2019, the working group studied a number of email lists to get a sense of their capabilities and constraints. We then distributed a survey on WPA-L, seeking to identify potential new institutional homes for WPA-L.

Based on our analysis of email lists and feedback provided by WPA-L’s current owner/administrator, the criteria established by the working group for a new institutional home included stipulations that the new owner/administrator plans to be at their current institution for a significant length of time, that they are willing to serve as the owner/administrator of a publicly accessible email list, and that they are willing and able to share administrative responsibilities with a moderation board comprised of individuals from different institutions who are capable of moderating and removing individual subscribers from the list.

The only respondent to our survey happened to be an active member of the working group, who had earlier volunteered to help archive WPA-L upon its retirement. Mike Palmquist is Associate Provost and Professor of English at Colorado State University, Founding Editor and Publisher of the WAC Clearinghouse (also housed as Colorado State), and current owner/administrator of WritingAnalytics-L: Writing Analytics Discussion List, which is also housed at Colorado State.

CSU Mailman Features

Colorado State University uses Mailman as its email list platform. According to the FAQ, Mailman includes the following roles:

Subscriber: A subscriber is someone who has subscribed to a list, receives messages posted to the list, and may also post messages for distribution to the list if permitted. Who may post, and how it is done, may be controlled by the list owners. A subscriber has no administrative power over list operation but can change a few of his or her own subscription settings. For example, a subscriber can decide to receive message "digests" rather than individual postings.

Owner: Each list must have an owner who is responsible for configuration, maintenance and operation of the list. The list owner may establish other owners, and may optionally have others take roles such as moderating the discussion or managing subscription requests. List owners may execute commands for their subscribers including adding and deleting subscribers.

Moderator: List moderators are optional. They are assigned by the owners and can manage list subscriptions and postings.


Colorado State University’s Mailman email list platform allows for the following:

  • moderators with different institutional affiliations and the capabilities to vet subscription requests and moderate and unsubscribe individual subscribers.
  • owners to configuring lists so that replies to messages are directed to either the original sender, the entire list, or to a specific email address. The current WPA-L setting is to reply to the entire list, which promotes discussion (as well as the occasional unintended reply-all).
  • subscribers to receive list posts in regular or digest form
  • emergency moderation holds on all mail sent (in the case of malicious attacks)
  • Automatic moderation holds on messages over 61440 kb.

CSU Technical Support

Colorado State University’s technical support can assist in migrating WPA-L’s current subscriber list to the new list.


Archiving WPA-L

All the past discussions from WPA-L during its home at Arizona State University will be archived in the new location. Mike Palmquist will be working with Barry Maid to find out how to make the list transition as seamless as possible while preserving the prior list discussions in the new location.


Possible Name Change

We have explored the idea of changing the name of WPA-L to reflect its broad scope more accurately. We have also discussed keeping the current name to signal the long history of the list. We have provided a list of options.


  1. WPA-L (no change)
  2. Writing and Rhetoric Listserv (WR-L)
  3. Comp Rhet Listserv (CR-L)
  4. Writing Studies Listserv (WS-L)
  5. Writing Studies and Rhetoric Listserv (WSR-L)



Working Group Members and Contact Info for Questions