Of Education-coop cabal: what's it, who's it, how one joins it, why is it like that? - Education

8 Jun 2015

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