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