Hi Ian, On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 01:17:20PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > Thanks for your message.
You're welcome, thanks. > Don's proposed resolution clearly does not close the door. It makes > it possible for someone who is interested in declassification to try > to develop a workable process, consult listmaster and the project, and > to actually declassify things. If there is in fact anyone who wants > to do this. > > (I don't think Nicolas's version closes the door either but the > clarification of intent in Don's amendment is useful.) I do prefer Don's amendment on this particular point. > I don't understand your analogies. They're a bit histronic, for which I apologise. > If you think that -private is a breach of our principle of openness, > then the corresponding response would be to abolish it. Or perhaps > implement some kind of restrictions on its (ab)use (beyond mere social > convention, which we already have and which we do indeed occasionally > breach). This is perhaps where I will appear most contradictory. I agree that in the pure principle of openness, we shouldn't have a -private. However, we need one for pragmatic reasons. We should therefore avoid using it as much as we can. I think we're all in agreement with this so far. The "safe space" argument I've just made in another thread reply is why I get particularly uncomfortable about how we phrase that discouragement. I think, if someone feels that they can't take the heat for posting something on e.g. -devel at a particular given moment, then I would rather permit them to make the choice to post on -private (that is, weighing up the openness argument versus the flamebait problem on a per-post basis and for themselves) and have their contribution than not have it at all. However, this approach for me is less acceptable if there is a diminished chance of such "flame-retardant" discussions from ever being declassified, which I think would be the case after this GR passes. The dissonance might simply be I perceive the current state of affairs to be that we might actually declassify some of -private, some day, and the GR (original text at least) makes it less so. (I even had "join the declassification effort" on my long-term TODO list, but I have done precicely nothing). Adding the riders about a better process soothes this a bit. I'd love to know what the original GR proposer (Daniel Ruoso) thinks about this; or the seconders (inc Neil McGovern who is still active at least); I seem to recall Amaya was involved but I could be remembering wrong. -- Jonathan Dowland Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
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