Subject: Re: [omni-discuss] email archives for list members only, except announce?
David,
I understand what you're sharing about the experiences you have had with people seeking voice and space in this project.
However, I do not believe that flipping bits from public to private on our email list archives will change that. I think Jordan's implementation of a
helpdesk@ list (private archives to protect senders), and leveraging clear public-facing, private (or semi-private), and alternative communication channels (e.g. physical "anonymous comment box" by the front door) are all
excellent ways to approach these situations. We should set up a
whistleblower@lists.omnicommons.org or
leaks@lists.omnicommons.org for instance!
Historically, I have had more than a handful of conversations with folks (some active members, other allies elsewhere in the world) who have used and read the public archives of the sudo room email lists for their information and for all of our benefit. We depend on this form of participation to continue to exist. Further, we link to these discussions in our email threads, on the wiki, and elsewhere.
We must be clear about what is public versus private, but we should challenge ourselves to make more communications available (indexed by google also means we can link to it on the public web... the structure of the web that was valuable even before search engines and the information search engines use to crawl content and formulate rankings, etc). We can also encourage search engines not to index this content to keep it unsearchable, but probably the folks who typically want to search it will be us and our community.
To me, a good number of our problems right now correspond to
access,
transparency, and
engaging new participants. In light of these issues, there is a clear direction for us to travel in which we should value
"open, public discourses over closed, proprietary processes" as well as
"access and transparency over exclusivity" in order to
"solve real problems over hypotheticals, while respecting visions of the future" -
https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association#Values
All three of us on this thread so far are sudo room members, what do you all think about these values I've shared?
// Matt