Issue #4 - Make membership (more) public

Following the resolution of issue #1 "Allow public access to membership statistics", anyone may now see statistics on SPI membership thanks to the 4 general metrics visible on https://members.spi-inc.org/stats

Nevertheless, SPI's membership remains mostly private. It is not possible to tell whether someone is a member, to even confirm that a member is a member, to tell what kind of persons applicants and members are, or to tell which applications were rejected. Even members may only see their own applications.

I request to make membership public or more public. I do not see what part of the information currently stored in applications could be private, so I think applications should be made public by default, but at a minimum, it should be possible for one to make its own applications public.

Our associated project Debian already uses a web application which makes its membership a lot more public than SPI's, which can be seen at https://nm.debian.org/
This application is implemented in Python and licensed under the GNU AGPL: https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/nm/nm2.git/tree/
The membership requirements of Debian and SPI are different, but I do not see SPI requirements which Debian does not have.

Making applications public would:

1. make it much easier for potential members to evaluate whether applying is worth it.
2. provide the data necessary for members to take enlightened decisions about whether they should start evaluating applications or review the membership process
3. provide credit to application managers
4. easy identifying possible bugs in the application process

--
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com

Filipus Klutiero writes ("Issue #4 - Make membership (more) public"):
> I request to make membership public or more public. I do not see
> what part of the information currently stored in applications could
> be private, so I think applications should be made public by
> default, but at a minimum, it should be possible for one to make its
> own applications public.

I think someone ought to be able to be a contributing member of SPI
without that necessarily being public.

Bear in mind that our contributing members are our governing body, and
might be subject to pressure from (eg) employers to vote in particular
ways.

Ian.

Hi Ian,

On 2016-09-19 06:54, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Filipus Klutiero writes ("Issue #4 - Make membership (more) public"):
>> I request to make membership public or more public. I do not see
>> what part of the information currently stored in applications could
>> be private, so I think applications should be made public by
>> default, but at a minimum, it should be possible for one to make its
>> own applications public.
> I think someone ought to be able to be a contributing member of SPI
> without that necessarily being public.
>
> Bear in mind that our contributing members are our governing body, and
> might be subject to pressure from (eg) employers to vote in particular
> ways.

I am surprised to see the risk of corruption as an argument for keeping membership private, when opening would also allow to study which organizations are linked to SPI members. Are you aware of pressure from employers to influence the votes of SPI contributors?

I doubt this is desirable, but if we only agree on an opt-out transparency, the software powering nm.debian.org does not support that to my knowledge (but I have only used that site to obtain information).

>
> Ian.

--
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com