Holding more discussions in public

Hello,

I have noticed that there are a number of discussions here that are held
on -board or -prviate when there is no real need for them to not be on
-general. Some of them are on both -board *and* -private, which seems
extra silly. I'd like to propose this:

* Elimination of board-private mailing list and the repeal
of 2003-03-11.iwj.1. That list is never used anyway.

* When carrying out discussions, we should be able to assume that:
+ Everyone subscribed to spi-board is also subscribed to spi-private
+ Everyone subscribed to spi-private is also subscribed to
spi-general

* All conversation, discussion, debates, updates, etc. should be
carried out on spi-general (or a different public SPI list) unless
there is a compelling reason not to.

* All remaining conversation should be carried out on spi-private
unless there is a compelling reason that it should be restricted to
members of the board.

I could think of only one example of something that would go to
spi-private:

* Private information about financial transactions or addresses
(that is, a donor may not wish to be publically identified)

And I could only think of one example of something that should go to
spi-board:

* Confidential discussions with SPI legal counsel

I think that most of the conversations in spi-board, and a goot number
of them in spi-private, have no need to be held in private.

To implement this, we'll need a resolution repealing 2003-03-11.iwj.1.
I don't think we need resolutions for the rest of it.

Comments?

-- John

100% agreed here, John.

This is a policy that should have been coming for a long time. It would also
be ultra-cool if SPI would "declassify" anything in its historical list
archives that does not fall under the privacy statements you've outlined.

On Wednesday 02 March 2005 1:37 pm, John Goerzen wrote:
> I have noticed that there are a number of discussions here that are held
> on -board or -prviate when there is no real need for them to not be on
> -general. Some of them are on both -board *and* -private, which seems
> extra silly. I'd like to propose this:
>
> * Elimination of board-private mailing list and the repeal
> of 2003-03-11.iwj.1. That list is never used anyway.
>
> * When carrying out discussions, we should be able to assume that:
> + Everyone subscribed to spi-board is also subscribed to spi-private
> + Everyone subscribed to spi-private is also subscribed to
> spi-general
>
> * All conversation, discussion, debates, updates, etc. should be
> carried out on spi-general (or a different public SPI list) unless
> there is a compelling reason not to.
>
> * All remaining conversation should be carried out on spi-private
> unless there is a compelling reason that it should be restricted to
> members of the board.
>
> I could think of only one example of something that would go to
> spi-private:
>
> * Private information about financial transactions or addresses
> (that is, a donor may not wish to be publically identified)
>
> And I could only think of one example of something that should go to
> spi-board:
>
> * Confidential discussions with SPI legal counsel
>
> I think that most of the conversations in spi-board, and a goot number
> of them in spi-private, have no need to be held in private.
>
> To implement this, we'll need a resolution repealing 2003-03-11.iwj.1.
> I don't think we need resolutions for the rest of it.

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
ean(at)brainfood(dot)com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 04:39:31PM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> This is a policy that should have been coming for a long time. It would also
> be ultra-cool if SPI would "declassify" anything in its historical list
> archives that does not fall under the privacy statements you've outlined.

That sounds more difficult to do than just asking for new discussions to
be on spi-general. People have posted to the other lists with the
expectation that some level of privacy would be maintained. To
"declassify" the old archives would theoretically require asking all old
posters whether they consented to letting there messages be public.

--
gram

In the case of the SPI board list (the major offender) this is a very simple
process.

On Wednesday 02 March 2005 5:28 pm, Graham Wilson wrote:
> That sounds more difficult to do than just asking for new discussions to
> be on spi-general. People have posted to the other lists with the
> expectation that some level of privacy would be maintained. To
> "declassify" the old archives would theoretically require asking all old
> posters whether they consented to letting there messages be public.

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
ean(at)brainfood(dot)com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 11:24:26AM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> In the case of the SPI board list (the major offender) this is a very simple
> process.

It would involve contacting everyone who ever has been a board member or
advisor and making them reconsider every individual message. That could
be quite complex, given that some people like Darren Benham have
disappeared off the face of the SPI/Debian earth, and given that pretty
much nobody remembers the level of importance of every message they have
sent to any list they frequently use.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

John Goerzen writes ("Holding more discussions in public"):
> * When carrying out discussions, we should be able to assume that:
> + Everyone subscribed to spi-board is also subscribed to spi-private
> + Everyone subscribed to spi-private is also subscribed to
> spi-general

Because of the relative volumes of these lists, it is not reasonable
to assume that people pay as much attention to the lists which have
more traffic. NB that the problem isn't the ability of people to
_see_ the messages, it's their ability to _post_.

One of the problems that Debian has had is the insistence that any
list where people who are trying to get work done have their
discussions must not only be world-readable, but also world-postable.
This leads to ad-hoc private discussions just so that people can have
a conversation without getting swamped.

Now, spi-general doesn't have this problem to the same degree as the
Debian lists, but I think we should be careful about making the
assumption that people pay as much attention to lists with public
posting as they do to lists with more restricted posting of followups
(whether the latter is a side-effect of restricted distribution, or
a deliberate measure).

> I could think of only one example of something that would go to
> spi-private:
>
> * Private information about financial transactions or addresses
> (that is, a donor may not wish to be publically identified)

IMO information about the identities of donors should definitely not
be disclosed beyond the boad and staff. Really, I think that
information should be on a need to know basis. But then I'm a
European and believe in data protection.

Ian.

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 01:37:07PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> I have noticed that there are a number of discussions here that are held
> on -board or -prviate when there is no real need for them to not be on
> -general. Some of them are on both -board *and* -private, which seems
> extra silly. I'd like to propose this:
[snip]

John, as I believe I've said already elsewhere, I like your proposal.

SPI Board and members, please let me know which, if any, of the types of
messages I've been sending to -private should be going to -general instead.
Since almost all of them have to do with the nuts and bolts of monetary
receipts and disbursements, I've probably tended to err on the side of
discretion. That has certain unfortunate side effects, as some of you
know.

Here's a sampling of the subjects of my recent mails to spi-private:

Jan 02 [Spi-private] snail mail roundup for Indianapolis 2004-12-02 to 2004-12-31
Jan 13 [Spi-private] Treasurer report format (was: FirstIB bank account opened)
Jan 13 [Spi-private] Re: Treasurer report format (was: FirstIB bank account opened)
Jan 13 Re: [Spi-private] Treasurer's report format suggestion
Jan 13 Re: [Spi-private] snail mail roundup for Indianapolis 2004-12-02 to 2004-12-31
Jan 13 Re: [Spi-private] Re: GNUstep and SPI
Jan 13 [Spi-private] BANK: deposited USD 859.00 to FirstIB checking account
Jan 24 Re: [Spi-private] Outdated information about SPI at Network for Good
Jan 27 [Spi-private] Re: signing checks for SPI
Feb 01 [Spi-private] Re: snail mail roundup for Indianapolis 2004-12-02 to 2004-12-31
Feb 01 [Spi-private] snail mail roundup for Indianapolis 2005-01-01 to 2005-01-30
Feb 01 [Spi-private] Re: snail mail roundup for Indianapolis 2005-01-01 to 2005-01-30
Feb 12 [Spi-private] BANK: deposited USD 4936.22 to FirstIB checking account
Feb 14 [Spi-private] BANK: scheduled payment of USD 146.78 to XXX
Feb 23 [Spi-private] BANK: several items paid on 2005-02-22
Feb 23 [Spi-private] notice of disbursement of Debian funds by SPI
Feb 27 Re: [Spi-private] BANK: several items paid on 2005-02-22
Feb 28 Re: [Spi-private] notice of disbursement of Debian funds by SPI
Mar 15 [Spi-private] preliminary snail mail report for Indianapolis 2005-02-01 to 2005-02-28
Mar 20 [Spi-private] BANK: deposited USD 1148.10 to FirstIB checking account on 2005-03-19
Mar 22 [Spi-private] BANK: scheduled payment of USD 300.00 to XXX
Mar 22 [Spi-private] BANK: scheduled payment of 290.00 to XXX
Mar 22 [Spi-private] [XXX: Foreign donations]

In some cases I replaced pieces of the original subject text with "XXX".

Comments?

--
G. Branden Robinson, Deputy Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
branden(at)spi-inc(dot)org
http://www.spi-inc.org/