[H-GEN] Reasons why the current Private Lists should remain Private:

[matheist76 at westnet.com.au]

Reasons why the current Private Lists should remain Private

Background: Russell has proposed that we change both the 
SysAdmin and Exec lists from being private to public 
lists. Russell intends to have a vote on at the coming
Exec meeting in order to do this.

These list were both created on the 10th of May this year 
by James Iseppi and Stephen Thomas after the major crash 
that occurred earlier this year. Prior to that they were 
aliases.
 
By changing them from an alias to a list it means that 
there is now a record of each and every email sent to 
SysAdmin and Exec lists which did not occur when 
they were only aliases. These are viewable only by members 
of the Exec and the SysAdmins.  

Reasons why the both list should remain private:

1. By having a private lists for Exec and Sysadmin this
allows members to more openly express opinions and ideas.

2. It provides outsiders with an easy way to contact the 
right group of people and to do so privately. There might 
be issues that involve people, clubs etc that shouldn't be 
made public due to privacy or issues that should be made
world readable because they might have a negative impact on 
the club.

3. Personal and private details can be passed on to the 
right people without fear that they become world readable.

4. There are records kept of the emails and the members of 
the list can go back and take a look at what happened. At 
this moment they are viewable by Exec and our System Admins.
If the lists become public what will happen to these records?
By this I mean do the Exec still have access to the old 
private records and if this is such an issue then surely it 
indicates that there have been issues that have been dealt 
with in the past that have required a private list.

5. If something should be made public then by all means send
to general or announce. Having a private lists doesn't prevent
things sent to the private list from being made public as 
they can be easily CC/forwarded to the general list if and 
when required.

6. More hands make light work. In other words it pays to have 
more than one trusted Humbug member knowing about issues, even
private issues, and then being able to act on those issues.
Whether it be fixing an alias, dealing with private 
correspondence, activating a wiki account or knowing that there
is mail in our PO Box. By having a number of trusted members
increases the chance of a job getting done.


Specific Exec list issues:

While the Exec lists is private I can share the nature of 
what is discussed on it and what goes there.

These are mail box notification, discussions on topics like
room bookings and dealings with UQ in particular ITS, wiki 
account creation. Also Private and public requests from 
groups and companies which have included spam requesting 
that we put ads up on the wiki. 

If we allowed the wiki account creation notice to go to a 
public list there would be issues in so far as anyone could 
get accounts. At this point companies that have put in the 
ad request simply would put them up. We would lose control 
over our own wiki.

The way it stands now any one of six Exec members can activate 
an account. The chances of all of the Exec not being online 
and unable to deal with the activation is very slim. 

If we set it up so that the account creation notices went only 
to one person (example: the Secretary) there is very little 
record apart from that with the wiki system. Also you are very
much relying on only that one person. It won't take much for 
them to simply not get around to activating an account.   

Russell states that he wants the Secretary to handle all 
private issues in regards to the Exec.

I have three major problems with this. 

1. If the Secretary is away or is simply not doing their job 
then nobody knows.

2. Even if they are doing their job and are doing it to the 
best of their ability there will be things they simply won't 
pickup.

3. How does the secretary report private emails. Does he/she 
create one report that is then kept private or does he/she 
create two reports where one is private and the other public.
Either which way this seems a bad way of going about things
because all knowledge relates to what has happened in the past
when we should know what is happening now. 

In current system we know what has been sent to and from the 
Exec already. Record keeping is easily done by the Secretary 
who can forward any emails to the Exec list and keep any 
private documentation safe. As to reporting of correspondence 
a quick overview is all that is required. All that needs to 
be known, from an Exec point of view, is where to look. 

As to purely private correspondence for the Secretary alone an 
acknowledgment that they received it and responded to it is 
all that is require. Anything that the greater Humbug should
know should have already been posted to general.


Matthew Franklin (Vice President)