[sudo-discuss] [omni-discuss] email archives for list members only, except announce?

Craig Rouskey craigrouskey at gmail.com
Sat Oct 4 17:26:17 PDT 2014


Beautiful!

On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Matthew Senate <mattsenate at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow.
>
> Justice that is not loving is not just; love that is not just is not
> loving. Just so, dissemination without dialogue can become stray scatter,
> and dialogue without dissemination can be interminable tyranny. The motto
> of communication theory ought to be: Dialogue with the self, dissemination
> with the other. This is another way of stating the ethical maxim: Treat
> yourself like an other and the other like a self.
>
> I had to re-post that simply for the poetry of it.
>
> Thanks Jenny, I always appreciate your view on these issues, and I hope
> you can also share with other Omni Commoners some more elements of your
> personal experiences with online communication.
>
> Mia,
>
> Thanks for sharing more of your perspective. I definitely see where you
> are coming from.
>
> At sudo room we encourage developing our knowledge and experience with
> issues concerning privacy and security in all realms: digital, network and
> otherwise. I think there is a lot of potential to expand these questions,
> experiences, and practices to the wider Omni Oakland Collective community.
>
> I have to re-iterate what Jenny pointed out: considering that all online
> communications are potentially public. This is salient. Consider the
> implications if we remember that storing information on a digital device,
> passing information over a digital network, and storing information with
> online services (e.g. email providers) are inherently at risk to being
> accessed, copied, or intercepted by others, intentionally or
> unintentionally.
>
> I already suggested some things we currently do to address these issues
> (e.g. make it clear to the public how to contact us, funneling that traffic
> into a more private location like helpdesk at lists.omnicommons.org).
>
> On top of this, I'm starting to think that the issues that you have
> brought up can be addressed much better at an individual and
> community-of-practice scale, rather than flipping the "public" to "private"
> switch for (some) list archives. By educating each other and elevating our
> knowledge about communication, privacy, and security, we can protect
> ourselves, one another, and members of the general public (our friends,
> allies, comrades, and prospective collaborators among them). Here's how:
>
>    - Build Awareness of Privacy and Security
>       - Audit our existing communication culture, understand how and why
>       we communicate the way we do.
>       - Research best practices and parallel examples in other
>       (especially similar) communities.
>       - Learn about the risks associated with various forms of
>       communication
>       - Identify ways to improve our practices to ensure our
>       communications are more appropriate for various circumstances and concerns.
>    - Pseudonyms / Nyms / Real Names
>       - Reinforce the idea that we do not need to have any "real names"
>       policy, meaning by default for communication, and for most purposes, we do
>       not need your real name, you can share any "nym" that you prefer, even
>       multiple.
>       - Encourage use of pseudonymous and anonymous communication, like
>       an email address that is not associated with one's real name or an
>       anonymous "comment box", respectively.
>       - Perhaps we can dole out @omnicommons.org addresses in order to
>       protect users' email addresses and therefore elements of their identities?
>    - Use End-to-End Encryption
>       - Educate and encourage attempts to use secure communication using
>       end-to-end encryption techniques. Meaning, you encrypt your message, then
>       you provide a mechanism for your recipient to decrypt that message and read
>       it; they encrypt their response, you use a mechanism to decrypt it, and
>       read their response.
>       - There exist tools for popular communication mechanisms including:
>          - email
>          - chat
>          - text messaging
>          - phone calls
>          - sneaker net (walking data between computers)
>       - Personalize Protection
>       - Leverage our community's knowledge to work with folks on a
>       case-by-case basis to address individual needs.
>
> And I'm sure there's much more we can do.
>
> // Matt
>
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Jenny Ryan <tunabananas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Concur'd on all points, Matt. If people are concerned about their
>> contributions being publicly viewable, they can post to 'confidential' or
>> another private list - or simply have an in-person conversation. I'd like
>> to know the particular use cases for which we would need closed, private
>> mailing lists - because I strongly believe that open and transparent
>> communication and documentation is essential to this project having an
>> impact not just within our community, but for the wider world. If we intend
>> to create something greater than ourselves, our methods of organizing, the
>> problems we face and overcome, the things that bind or break us, our
>> experiences of creating the space and communicating about it, all of this
>> is vital and important knowledge we have a responsibility to share so that
>> others may learn from, iterate off, adapt, fork, and possibly change their
>> own corners of the world for the better, inspired by what we're doing here.
>>
>> Let's not keep our history to ourselves. Knowing that our communications
>> are public and archivable also keeps us accountable to ourselves, each
>> other, and the world. We should always _expect_ what we communicate online
>> to become potentially public, and may as well just own it, be responsible
>> for our words, and communicate with kindness and wisdom - because words are
>> often the most powerful artifacts we leave behind for future generations to
>> inherit.
>>
>> My favorite quote on communication, in particular the debate of dialogue
>> vs. dissemination and the way in which communication flows from internal
>> dialogue to outward dissemination:
>> Justice that is not loving is not just; love that is not just is not
>> loving. Just so, dissemination without dialogue can become stray scatter,
>> and dialogue without dissemination can be interminable tyranny. The motto
>> of communication theory ought to be: Dialogue with the self, dissemination
>> with the other. This is another way of stating the ethical maxim: Treat
>> yourself like an other and the other like a self.
>>
>> (John Durham Peters, Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of
>> Communication, p. 57)
>>
>> Jenny
>> http://jennyryan.net
>> http://thepyre.org
>> http://thevirtualcampfire.org
>> http://technomadic.tumblr.com
>>
>> `~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
>>  "Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories."
>> -Laurie Anderson
>>
>> "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining
>> it."
>>  -Hannah Arendt
>>
>> "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create."
>> -Stéphane Mallarmé
>> ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Matthew Senate <mattsenate at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> David,
>>>
>>> I understand what you're sharing about the experiences you have had with
>>> people seeking voice and space in this project.
>>>
>>> However, I do not believe that flipping bits from public to private on
>>> our email list archives will change that. I think Jordan's implementation
>>> of a *helpdesk@* list (private archives to protect senders), and
>>> leveraging clear public-facing, private (or semi-private), and alternative
>>> communication channels (e.g. physical "anonymous comment box" by the front
>>> door) are all *excellent* ways to approach these situations. We should
>>> set up a *whistleblower at lists.omnicommons.org
>>> <whistleblower at lists.omnicommons.org> *or *leaks at lists.omnicommons.org
>>> <leaks at lists.omnicommons.org>* for instance!
>>>
>>> Historically, I have had more than a handful of conversations with folks
>>> (some active members, other allies elsewhere in the world) who have used
>>> and read the public archives of the sudo room email lists for their
>>> information and for all of our benefit. We depend on this form of
>>> participation to continue to exist. Further, we link to these discussions
>>> in our email threads, on the wiki, and elsewhere.
>>>
>>> We must be *clear* about what is *public* versus *private,* but we
>>> should challenge ourselves to make more communications available (indexed
>>> by google also means we can link to it on the public web... the structure
>>> of the web that was valuable *even before *search engines and the
>>> information search engines use to crawl content and formulate rankings,
>>> etc). We can also encourage search engines not to index this content to
>>> keep it unsearchable, but probably the folks who typically want to search
>>> it will be us and our community.
>>>
>>> To me, a good number of our problems right now correspond to *access*,
>>> *transparency*, and *engaging new participants*. In light of these
>>> issues, there is a clear direction for us to travel in which we should
>>> value *"open, public discourses over closed, proprietary processes"* as
>>> well as *"access and transparency over exclusivity"* in order to *"solve
>>> real problems over hypotheticals, while respecting visions of the future"*
>>> - https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association#Values
>>>
>>> All three of us on this thread so far are sudo room members, what do you
>>> all think about these values I've shared?
>>>
>>> // Matt
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 2:11 PM, yar <yardenack at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 12:51 PM, David Keenan <dkeenan44 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > I would like to help you welcome new members - if I can get those
>>>> notices, I
>>>> > will reply and copy you and Jenny.
>>>>
>>>> We already have a list called "helpdesk" which is for receiving
>>>> private emails about the omni, so if we all CC helpdesk then others
>>>> know what's being done and how it's being done. Perhaps if we notice
>>>> subscriptions from somebody new, we can forward the request to
>>>> helpdesk!
>>>>
>>>> Anybody interested in being part of the general email liaison /
>>>> outreach team, please subscribe. :)
>>>>
>>>> https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/helpdesk
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> discuss mailing list
>>>> discuss at lists.omnicommons.org
>>>> https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/discuss
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> discuss mailing list
>>> discuss at lists.omnicommons.org
>>> https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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>


-- 
Craig Rouskey, MSc
Medical Microbiologist and Immunologist
(510) 407-6775
craigrouskey at gmail.com
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