Holding more discussions in public

[Ian Jackson]

John Goerzen writes ("Holding more discussions in public"):
>  * When carrying out discussions, we should be able to assume that:
>    + Everyone subscribed to spi-board is also subscribed to spi-private
>    + Everyone subscribed to spi-private is also subscribed to
>      spi-general

Because of the relative volumes of these lists, it is not reasonable
to assume that people pay as much attention to the lists which have
more traffic.  NB that the problem isn't the ability of people to
_see_ the messages, it's their ability to _post_.

One of the problems that Debian has had is the insistence that any
list where people who are trying to get work done have their
discussions must not only be world-readable, but also world-postable.
This leads to ad-hoc private discussions just so that people can have
a conversation without getting swamped.

Now, spi-general doesn't have this problem to the same degree as the
Debian lists, but I think we should be careful about making the
assumption that people pay as much attention to lists with public
posting as they do to lists with more restricted posting of followups
(whether the latter is a side-effect of restricted distribution, or
a deliberate measure).

> I could think of only one example of something that would go to
> spi-private:
> 
>  * Private information about financial transactions or addresses
>    (that is, a donor may not wish to be publically identified)

IMO information about the identities of donors should definitely not
be disclosed beyond the boad and staff.  Really, I think that
information should be on a need to know basis.  But then I'm a
European and believe in data protection.

Ian.