[HCoop-Discuss] Openness of mailing lists

[Davor Ocelic]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 05:53:42PM -0500, Aaron Hsu wrote:
> 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.

What? General public cannot hold me responsible or accountable for
anything. And general public is irrelevant here - HCoop discussion is 
none of their business.

The only thing that the general public could be interested in, 
and note - *could be* , not *has the right to be* - are some
technical or philosophical advancements we make and then decide we want
to share with the public. But this is again irrelevant in the context
of mailing lists because we already agreed to publish such useful
conclusions and/or procedures on our publicly-available Wiki.

> 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.

If you want a score with a potential employer, you will ask HCoop
for a Letter of recommendation (I suppose that's the correct English
term). If you think HCoop would not give you one, then you are basically
trying to trick your potential employer into thinking you have more 
to offer than you really do.

But regardless of employer or someone else searching the archives,
hcoop-sysadmin is not a list relevant to people interested in 
'security vulnerabilities'. HCoop-sysadmin would only contain
information about vulnerabilities in the context of impact on HCoop,
which is none of the general public's interest.

> 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.

Rediculous. I can give you any number
of messages from the -sysadmin list which are of high integrity and
quality **in the context of HCoop-sysadmin list**, but of irrelevant
quality for the general public. (And please, don't reply with "Show
me some").

Every one of my posts to HCoop-sysadmin is only between me and HCoop
community. It is in-house. If you want your own posts to be between you
and the rest of the world, copy them to your blog.

Hcoop-sysadmin contains no material of general public interest. And
when such material does occur on the list, it is agreed to put it
on our Wiki, almost always refined and put together with reason
instead of being spread over multiple emails and email threads and
other communication channels (such as IRC).

> 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.

It is not about "being comfortable with all [my] actions as they
relate to Hcoop being scrutinized".

It is about information that I *do* want to share with HCoop members,
but NOT with the whole world. Most of our discussion is completely
irrelevant for the world. And in some cases it is even harmful for 
HCoop or the e-mail author.

I don't know if we still have it, but I remember having our Web page
saying "We are a community of trustworthy individuals". This does not
include the whole Internet population.

Note the distinction between a privilege and a right.

Furthermore, the decisiveness with which you state that people who 
don't agree "should not be System Admins" is really interesting.

> 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.

If there is ANYTHING (to mimick your expressive
writing style) that would be useful in having lists open to the public,
then it is receiving feedback and/or comments from people who are not HCoop
members and would otherwise - if the lists were closed - have no way to
see messages and comment on them.

Also, how much do you think there will be interest for HCoop matters
from people who are not HCoop members and never intend to be? That
number is close to zero, so what I am trying to prevent is

  a) making HCoop information accessible to random people who search
 the web for something unrelated, and then find hcoop posts among the 
 search results.
  b) making HCoop information accessible to random people who
 are performing specific person name or nickname search. By now I hope I got
 you to understand that HCoop discussion is not a public matter, except
 in part which we choose to share with the public. (The fact that we do
 want to share whenever we have a useful functional or informational
 whole is another matter - again don't mix privilege with a right).

And those who do intend to become our members, and who look into 
mailing list archives to get more input about us won't mind the
inaccessibility of -sysadmin. First of all, exposing them to raw
material from mailing lists can undeservedly backfire unless they have the 
mental apparatus that can handle the context. And second, they don't
have to pay more than 5 or 10 dollars to get to know us (and the
mailing list archives) - so they can cancel in one or two month
time if they want.

-doc