[Foundation-l] WMF Development and Memes - Foundation transparency

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Jan 9, 2008 10:03 PM, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> On the topic of transparency, there was a so-called secret mailing list,
> as some characterized it, e.g.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/
>
> Jimbo prefers the word 'private' to 'secret' - he's said so on several
> occasions. Do you see any ethical objection for the existence (and save
> in defined circumstances, membership) of all mailing lists known to the
> Foundation, associated with the encyclopedia and related projects, to be
> made public.
>
> Do you see any argument for such disclosure?

I see some arguments for such disclosure:
* While the details of some discussions need to be private the fact
that there is a discussion usually has less privacy required.
* Increased disclosure can help tame the more wild and inaccurate
conspiracy theories.
* Improved consistency with the claims of openness which are often
made around here.

However, I don't believe such disclosure is achievable.   The secret
mailing list you refer to, wpcyberstalkers, was run on Jimmy's
company's servers, not on Wikimedia's servers.   It would be
unrealistic to expect to impose a rule like this on the whole world.
Wikimedia's handling of lists is generally fairly open. I suppose
that's why the wpcyberstalkers list was at Wikia, and likewise for the
sexually discriminatory wikichix lists.

Wikimedia-run lists are listed at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo, though a quick glance
indicates that the lists like arbcom-l, internal-l, staff-l, and
board-l are not shown. Their existence is not secret. (and I'm sure
there are a few others that I'm forgetting to mention)

Another counterpoint is that a long reused CC list is no different
than a mailing list. It would be unreasonable and unrealistic to
request everyone to disclose everyone that they are mailing.

Then what about other forms of communication? Would you expect me to
post a log of every phone call I've had with another Wikimedian? :)

To me it seems like an impossible task to set rules along these lines
which would not violate people's privacy while not creating constant
argument about conformance.

In the public space these sorts of concerns are covered by things like
sunshine laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act,
I'm most familiar with Florida law
http://brechner.org/Brechner%20Center%20FAQs-%20Florida%20in%20the%20Sunshine.asp
).   I think the problem with adopting these kinds of rules for
Wiki[pm]edia decision makers is that whom is actually a decision maker
is hard to define, and any reasonable definition likely includes more
than a thousand people.

Still, I think it would be productive to look at the various
techniques for government transparency and look for things which could
be productively applied here.

I've long found it amusing that agents speaking for Wiki[pm]edia have
claimed a revolutionary level of transparency while in many areas the
level of transparency is below the level required by some governments
of themselves by law.  Certantly some aspects of the project are very
open but a revolutionarily open document management system should not
be confused for transparency in governance.