[Eg-oversight-board] Oversight Board Discussion List - Decision Needed

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On 05/16/2012 09:46 AM, McKinney, Elizabeth wrote:
> Question: If we make the mailing list open to the world, should we
> require a name and organization in an attempt to ward off
> undesirables?

 > Question: Do we want to limit the Oversight Board mailing list to
 > members of the Board and those who need to receive our communications
 > directly in order to perform work on our behalf? (ie Shauna, Val,
 > Tara, Chris) Please note that our communications are archived and
 > available publicly.  Of course now that I've upset folks limiting it
 > will be an unpopular decision.

In the interest of full transparency, I think that the Oversight Board 
mailing list should be open to any and all subscribers.  Further, if a 
community member wishes to raise an issue to the board via the mailing 
list, I consider that to be an appropriate venue.  I don't know of any 
instance to date where a community member has abused the mailing list; 
if such an event arises in the future, I would prefer that we deal with 
it first via normal persuasion.

Of course, at times we may want to conduct votes and other formal board 
business on the mailing list, but since we of course know who the 
members are at all times, I wouldn't expect that there would be a 
problem doing tallys.

I don't think that requiring name and organization is necessary at this 
time.  Of course, we no doubt will get spammers subscribing every now 
and again, but we can trust Chris' judgment regarding pruning obvious 
spam accounts as part of normal list maintenance.

While the archives of course are and continue to be available, I know 
that some community members would prefer to get board emails as they 
occur, rather than having to remember to check the archives periodically.

There will no doubt be some occasions where the board will have a reason 
to conduct correspondence in "closed session", but those should be 
limited to the bare minimum necessary.

Regards,

Galen
--
Galen Charlton
Director of Support and Implementation
Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
direct: +1 770-709-5581
cell:   +1 404-984-4366
skype:  gmcharlt
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