[WikiEN-l] Coordination on Secret/private lists

On 12/5/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: I know this horse is sorta dead, but since peopel are still engaging in the post-mortem, I thought I should chime in. First of all, Matt and Guy and Slim can't lie about something they can't possibly have known. The truth is, they have no clue whether the list was used to coordiante or not. Durova posted to the list about !! to the list-- what responses she got back through email, only Durova and her sleuths know. People can say "I didn't see any full-formed coordination", but they can't actually know there was no such coordination. Secondly, there's no need to fixate just on the !! issue. The list had been running long before !!, and it was "high volume". It certainly seems that the Cyberstalking and the Investigations lists existed to cooridinate SOMETHING. What exactly were they coordinating, who knws-- but it's obvious people on it were talking about wikipedia, they weren't swapping recipes, running a support group, or investigating the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Precisely which specfic incidents were discussed and were coordidnated-- that we can't say. Was that coordnation improper? That we cannot answer. But obviously, there was some sort of coordination, and there was SOME reason that even the mere EXISTENCE of the lists were being kept secret-- rather than just keeping hte contents of the list private. What could they have been coordinating? Who knows. * !!'s block was one obvious candidate, because we know Durova sent out a "inviation to coordination" on the list. But t enough people have come forward to claim Durova's post was just an invitation to coordiation, and if an future coordination occurred (as Durova claims it did), that coordination took place off list. * Miltopias block was almost certainly coordinated on the list-- Durova strongly implies it, and in fact Durova seems to practically gloat that the coordination over that went undiscovered. * DanT has speculated that the pro-BADSITES group coordinated the edit wars at WP:NPA and Robert Black and Judd Bagley there, but I don't think he claims to know that it was coordinated, or if he just suspects it. * I got an anonymous 'leak' some someone who was supposedly on the list who claims that the list was use to coordinate an edit-war at Wikipedia:Sock puppetry that occurred in November-- I personally have no way of knowing if that's true or not. ---- If some of these speculations turn out to be false, it's regretable, but inevitable. This is the risk you take when you run "lists that THEY don't know exist" --- when THEY (the community) finally do find out you've been running such lists, THEY are going to assume there's a reason THEY weren't allowed to about the existence of the lists. "We just wanted a private place to share our feelings" isn't going to assauge the community's fear that the list was used to coordinate something, somewhere, somehow. Whether that coordination is improper or broke the rules, who can say. That's another er risk of secret/private lists-- whatever evidence the participants have that might be used in their defense, they've elected to keep that evidence "secret"-- which only contributes to suspicion that something was rotten in Denmark. If it's all one big misunderstanding, if the lists really weren't used for anything inappropriate ever, I'd suggest making the archives as public as possible, redacting on only the truly private info-- the easiest way to show people you've got nothing to hide is to stop hiding stuff. Alec