Jonathan Dowland writes ("Re: Amendment to Proposed GR: Declassifying parts of -private of historical interest"): > Although this part of the text originates from the original GR text and > not Don's amendment, my comment applies as much to the amended text so > I'm threading it here: > > On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 05:56:12PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > > 3. In keeping with paragraph 3 of the Debian Social Contract, Debian > > Developers are strongly encouraged to use the debian-private mailing > > list only for discussions that should not be disclosed. > > One issue I have is this amounts to a form of gagging order.
I think it's just a restatement of the well-established idea that discussions that don't need the privacy of -private should not be held behind closed doors. > Have we had an exploration of why people sometimes choose to > converse on -private, rather than elsewhere? Such analysis (and > results therefore) would of course have to be on -private too, but I > put forth the following theory for *some* people choosing to, which > I have felt myself: some discussions on our public lists have been > horribly toxic and attract participants who are not otherwise > constructive parts of our community. Quite so. IMO that is a good reason to use -private for such a discussion. > We are all only human and sometimes we don't have the emotional > energy to deal with that. -private is, even if it isn't designed to > be, a virtual safe space. I don't think there is any need to apologise or feel guilty about such a choice. Ian.