[Foundation-l] On the cost of explaining things.

Wed Jan 9 06:19:24 UTC 2008

Chad wrote:
> Consider the recent issue of the"secret mailing list" to "ban problem
> users."

There was never a secret mailing list, and certainly none with any power 
to ban problem users.  If you want to criticize people for secrecy, then 
starting with this non-starter is not a good way to go about it.

> Now, you intend to stand before us and say that those who leaked
> information first should've come forward and spoken with the foundation
> prior to letting others in on it? I'm amused.

Why are you amused?  Let me walk you through the logic here, because I 
think this is really important.

There is a large mailing list, Internal-l, with a lot of people on it. 
There are other private mailing lists, as well, such as private-l where 
the developers can discuss things that might be sensitive security 
issues, etc.  These lists are structured with rules for participation 
and so on.

Now, people on these lists discuss and know things.  They are not a 
Sekret Cabal, they are people like you.  They are people who have chosen 
to take an interest in a particular part of foundation operations and 
gotten involved.

A lot of what gets discussed on these lists is private.  Sometimes, 
alas, it is not private, and a frequent refrain on the list is that 
people are asked to take conversations to a public list if there is no 
reason for them to remain private.  There is, on the whole, no sense on 
these lists that information should remain private any more than the 
absolute minimum necessary for a variety of perfectly sane reasons.

So, if someone is on a list, and has access to private information, and 
thinks, geeee.... shouldn't this be made public?  Then they could just 
SAY SO on the list.  And in the cases that I know of, the answer would 
have been either "yes, sure" or "yes, but could you wait until day after 
tomorrow so we can be sure" or similar.

And in some cases I can imagine, the answer might actually be "no".  And 
why not?  Some things really do need to be done in private.

The alternative, as Erik has pointed out, is that we have a culture 
where people think the foundation is being secretive and people think it 
is ok to randomly leak information in violation of the spirit of trust.

> While I am not advocating the open debate for the new accountant or
> business manager, I /do/ expect some level of communication from the
> Foundation, which does not happen nearly as often as it used to. 

I do not agree.  The volume of communication from the Foundation is 
higher than ever.  I just don't know why you would say such a thing.

--Jimbo