[HCoop-Discuss] Openness of mailing lists

[Aaron Hsu]

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 13:46:18 -0500, Adam Chlipala <adamc at hcoop.net> wrote:

> Right now, all of our mailing lists are archived on gmane.  Some folks
> have expressed concerns, especially about hcoop-sysadmin, that it
> shouldn't be readable by the public.  It seems that we need to decide
> how to handle this now, since some admins are refusing to use that list,
> while others are treating it as the default place for admin discussions.
>
> PROS for open list archives:
> - Easy Google searching
> - Prospective members can see how we operate.
> - Archives are stored on servers with failure modes independent from  
> ours.
> - Some members prefer gmane's NNTP interface to the lists.
>
> CONS for open list archives:
> - Some folks are uneasy about writing anything that anyone can find
> later in a web search.  For instance, future potential employers, etc..
> - We may discuss open security vulnerabilities on hcoop-sysadmin.
>
>
> I suggest this resolution for now:
> - Close hcoop-sysadmin.  Boot the archiving listener robots from the
> subscriber list and make the archives on the web viewable by subscribers
> only.  (Continue to enforce that only members may subscribe, using the
> portal's preferences page.)
> - Make the other lists fully open, including publicly-viewable archive
> pages on our servers and subscriptions by archiving robots.
>
> Any objections to this?

I strongly believe that all the lists should be public. First, such  
openness should help to demand a level of responsibility and public  
accountability on the part of the authors and contributors to that list. I  
strongly believe in an open policy to security vulnerabilities, and in  
fixing them post haste. The way I see it, the fact that people can and may  
in fact search these archives, such as potential employers, gives them all  
that muchj more incentive to behave in a respectful manner that would  
suggest them to the employer. The very idea that the list should contain  
correspondence which is not of a high integrity and quality suggests that  
the contributers of the list have some issues to start with. Especially  
regarding the system administration, if the system admins don't feel  
comfortable with all their actions as they relate to Hcoop being  
scrutinized, then they should not be System Admins.

Thus, I consider both CONS listed above as being advantages, and I see no  
downside to making all the lists public. Any private communication that  
needs to be made then, should only be of such a nature that a small subset  
of people should be reading it anyways, for example, maybe one system  
admin sending a password to another, or some such.

As such, I strongly support the idea to keep ALL LISTS OPEN and PUBLIC to  
all vieweres. I do believe, however, that not all people should be able to  
subscribe to the list and have the option to contribute. For example, only  
members should be able to contribute to Sysadmin, which is the current  
behaviour, if I understand correctly.

Additionally, I see no reason why we should not or cannot make a NNTP  
interface to the mailing lists available. I personally like NNTP better as  
well for discussions. Although, since GMane already seems to do a very  
good job of providing this interface, we may as well just continue to let  
Gmane handle that.

-- 
Aaron Hsu <arcfide at sacrificumdeo.net>
http://www.aaronhsu.com | XMPP/Gtalk: arcfide at xmpp.us
(703) 597-7656 | "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did  
nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke