Re: Announcing git-mentoring@googlegroups.com

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 12:17:49AM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:

> > Hm, this is a little circular, right? Part of the rationale for keeping
> > viewing limited was "that way it's not visible to generic search
> > engines".
> 
> Sorry if I wasn't clear.  My points were:
> 
> 1) limiting visibility harmful to helpfulness
> 
> 2) trusting "members" to keep potentially embarrasing posts
>    away from the public eye is unrealistic.  Let posters
>    maintain anonymity or pseudonymity for themselves.

I think it's trying to find a tradeoff, though. The point isn't to guard
sensitive information. It's to have a less intimidating forum for people
to converse in. Even though anybody from the public _could_ join and
read them, keeping them out of most web searches may be more
comfortable. Likewise, members of the group _could_ exfiltrate all of
the posts and show them publicly. But in practice that's unlikely.

Note that I'm guessing at what others would find more comfortable or
less intimidating. Obviously I'm quite happy to speak my mind all over
public mailing lists. ;) But the point is to give a forum for people who
aren't. I think this setup matches the mentoring list in other orgs.
E.g. Outreachy itself, though there I think you have to actually be an
intern to see the posts. We could moderate membership to the mentor list
but it seems like a hassle for little gain.

-Peff