[WikiEN-l] Coordination on Secret/private lists

[private musings]

To my mind, this dialog has become rather unfortunately overly polarised.
It's probably not as hard as we think to find common ground, which would
certainly be for the good.

My main concern in all this (which I think is echoed elsewhere clearly and
loudly) is that people have been taking 'on-wiki' actions without the
appropriate level of 'on-wiki' discussion. I think we would all agree that a
group (say 4 or 5) of 'senior' editors forming opinions privately, and then
each taking action in the matter at hand at the very least is behaviour
which probably requires great care to avoid becoming problematic.

.....and a small extra - in my view it also really helps to think about the
good faith reasoning behind the posts on all sides, there's a little too
much of the 'old school' 'anything goes' repartee of usenet past in some of
these discussions. I guess what I mean by that is that a sensible, nuanced
(diplomatic?) discussion isn't helped by incredulity on anyone's part,
feigned or otherwise. If you are genuinely incredulous, I'd recommend the
advice given previously - take a walk, calm down, and have a think before
you post - "what the heck are you on about? I have no idea what you're
talking about!" is part of the problem.

to my mind, almost all of these apply in some way;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brandeis#Selected_quotations

PM.
ps. many thanks for allowing this post onto the list.