While writing my letter of GLAM lists I recalled that I was once rejected membership in Education-coop mailing list. The reason was "Closed List".
As far as I know it's a list for a cabal of people who are working on Education (an[1] Education Collaborative). I know of them since their meeting in Prague[2] as a friend-wikimedian of mine attended it. The process of selecting people to that meeting was quite cabalish (with absolutely no public announcement) as well, iirc. During the meeting it was completely ungooglable, iirc. IIRC, the only mention I found back then was in some affiliate's google calendar. But I'm not about a meeting ages ago. I'm about the collaborative itself.
I'm not actually a person of WEP[3] but still I'm a person who don't likes when things are hidden but there's no real reason to do it. It looks like the case for me. I don't see why should it all be that much cabalish. Doesn't collaborative a derivative from collaboration? My views on word are often somewhat perfectionist but anyway I just can't see how collaboration and making things that closed can co-exist.
I'm fine with closed lists, teams and stuff in general as there are things which should not be discussed in public or it could because it's easier to make a tiny group of people do something instead of crying out to a lazy unorganised crowd. But just make it clear how can one (apply to) join or e.g. just join as a observer/non-voting commentator/whatever.
Footnotes:
[1] afair the page on outreachwiki was about some older formation under the name. it's probably fixed since that time) Education Collaborative
[2] was it already 2 years ago? time sure runs fast
[3] which means that it's not like I can e.g. go organise a WEP thing offline — the most I can do in real actions is helping a WEP person. That's if actions are about WEP and not about something general which any wikimedian can do.
Yours sincerely,
Base
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