Chad wrote:
Consider the recent issue of the"secret mailing list" to "ban problem users."
There was never a secret mailing list, and certainly none with any power to ban problem users. If you want to criticize people for secrecy, then starting with this non-starter is not a good way to go about it.
Now, you intend to stand before us and say that those who leaked information first should've come forward and spoken with the foundation prior to letting others in on it? I'm amused.
Why are you amused? Let me walk you through the logic here, because I think this is really important.
There is a large mailing list, Internal-l, with a lot of people on it. There are other private mailing lists, as well, such as private-l where the developers can discuss things that might be sensitive security issues, etc. These lists are structured with rules for participation and so on.
Now, people on these lists discuss and know things. They are not a Sekret Cabal, they are people like you. They are people who have chosen to take an interest in a particular part of foundation operations and gotten involved.
A lot of what gets discussed on these lists is private. Sometimes, alas, it is not private, and a frequent refrain on the list is that people are asked to take conversations to a public list if there is no reason for them to remain private. There is, on the whole, no sense on these lists that information should remain private any more than the absolute minimum necessary for a variety of perfectly sane reasons.
So, if someone is on a list, and has access to private information, and thinks, geeee.... shouldn't this be made public? Then they could just SAY SO on the list. And in the cases that I know of, the answer would have been either "yes, sure" or "yes, but could you wait until day after tomorrow so we can be sure" or similar.
And in some cases I can imagine, the answer might actually be "no". And why not? Some things really do need to be done in private.
The alternative, as Erik has pointed out, is that we have a culture where people think the foundation is being secretive and people think it is ok to randomly leak information in violation of the spirit of trust.
While I am not advocating the open debate for the new accountant or business manager, I /do/ expect some level of communication from the Foundation, which does not happen nearly as often as it used to.
I do not agree. The volume of communication from the Foundation is higher than ever. I just don't know why you would say such a thing.
--Jimbo