[Noisebridge-discuss] notes from a sad slacker

[Pecan Avocado]

While many people have already brought up objections to Noisebridge
using slack before (closed source, external infrastructure,
essentially a private club house, etc.), I'd like to address a more
specific issue with the current "Noisebridge" slack and its operation.

On August 24th, 2018, the user nthmost, the primary owner [1]  of the
"Noisebridge" slack (noisebridge.slack.com), made the following
changes to administrative roles (a screenshot of logs showing these
changes is attached):
  - Lemons (formerly signal): promoted to Owner and then later demoted
back to Admin.
  - Lady Red: demoted from Administrator to regular user.
  - ruthgrace: demoted from Administrator to regular user.
  - miloh: demoted from Administrator to regular user.
  - ratikate: promoted to Administrator from regular user.
  - yesac: promoted to Owner from regular user.
  - fineline: promoted to Owner from regular user.
- On August 28th, 2018, multiple members of the Noisebridge community
noticed that the make-up of the owners and administrators of the
"Noisebridge" slack had mysteriously changed.  As far as I am aware,
the new admins / owners and the demoted admins as well as promoted
users, were not informed of this change with the singular exception of
miloh who had requested that he not be an admin anymore.

In talking with people familiar, the following points were raised for
who may have made these changes and why:
    - Lady Red archived the #community channel.
    - Ruthgrace asked Naomi to take a month break from slack on or
around August 7th, 2018.
    - Ruthgrace, around the same time, requested that Naomi step down
as primary owner of slack.
    - I believe Lady Red also asked Naomi about transfering primary
ownership to someone else.
    - nthmost has expressed frustration with people shutting down
important conversations
    - since Lady Red and Ruthgrace had shut down conversations that
she wished to continue, it would make sense that she would want to
stop them from doing just that.
- During the reconciliation meeting on October 4th, Naomi stated that
she did not remove Lady Red as an admin or remove Ruth Grace as an
admin of the "Noisebridge" slack.
- On November 29th, 2018, the user beka posted a screenshot in the
bravespace channel of slack logs showing that the user nthmost had
made the adminship changes on August 24th, 2018.
- The user nthmost then responded to the screenshot by requesting IP
Logs (note: the user posting the screenshot, beka, would not have the
necessary permissions to view IP Logs whereas the user nthmost does
[2])
- The user nthmost then proceeded to change her slack "status" to
(iirc) "changing passwords".

These mysterious administration changes make me concerned about the
security of slack and the integrity of the community that has relied
on it as a key line of communication.

Given the totality of events, I currently believe that:
- Naomi is in fact responsible for having made the slack adminship changes.
- Naomi lied at the reconciliation meeting about removing Lady Red and
Ruth as administrators.
- Naomi's removal of Lady Red and Ruth from the role of administrator
was retaliatory.
  - Retaliatory actions are a problem because they lead to a might
makes right culture where people with power are free to take whatever
actions they wish, bypassing the rest of the community.
- Naomi should not be an administrator / owner / etc. of any
Noisebridge infrastructure.

Extra Notes:
[1] - For details on the slack permission model, see
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201314026-Roles-and-permissions-in-Slack
[2] - Only owners and admins can access ip logs; for details on
Slack's IP logging see
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/360002084807-View-Access-Logs-for-your-workspace

Screenshot of admin changes (top of screenshot is most recent change):
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HSlouNZYUjNQ5AvPNqHNKUQ8JHNQIeOq/view?usp=sharing

-- r
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: slack_c.png
Type: image/png
Size: 92964 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20190124/9d385341/attachment.png>