Re: "Private Foundation-List" Petition for referendum

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On 12/14/2009 08:54 PM, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:49 PM, Behdad Esfahbod<behdad behdad org>  wrote:
> > [/me removes board hat]
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I like to ask for your support in my petition for referendum to make
> > foundation-list archives private and membership limited to actual Foundation
> > members.  If we make that change we would be able to discuss matters freely
> > without making lots of news that more often than not are harmful to our
> > image to the world in general.
>
> Can you cite a few examples of where this has been a problem in the
> past?

Don't have to look much back.  Sam Varghese have been making a living churning 
news out of f-l traffic.  About the recent thread:

  http://www.itwire.com/content/view/29995/1090/1/0/

Which then made OSNews:

  http://www.osnews.com/story/22610/GNOME_To_Split_from_GNU_Project_/

And I hear it hit slashdot too.  The OSnews article alone drew 203 comments so 
far.  If you check the comments, they are mostly uninformed and out of 
context.  For example the ITWire article suggests that a blog post by Miguel 
was the trigger for Lucas starting the thread in f-l.  I can assure you (as a 
board member) that this is not the case.  Yet half the comments are around 
that blog post by Miguel now.

Another example, I read a comment in one of those articles yesterday.  It 
started like: "GNOME people is into a lot of name calling."  Now I think we 
should be able to discuss our own stuff without the outside make an 
out-of-context fuss about it.

> I think that our transparency is one of our greatest assets.

I know.  But there is a cost to it.  Transparency doesn't necessarily mean 
open to the world.  Being open to all our members is transparent-enough for me.

behdad

> Thanks,
>       Greg