[Noisebridge-discuss] notes from a sad slacker

[Naomi Most]

Hi there,

I did in fact make these changes and subsequently forgot about them, as the
meeting was more than a month after.  When confronted at the meeting, I
panicked.  I hadn't thought about any of that and wasn't expecting to hear
about it.

I was experimenting with a "chaos monkey" that uses the Slack API to
randomly assign privileges.  I also discovered a few people who shouldn't
be Owners or admins (like Miloh, since he's very much tapped out) and
de-priv'd those.

It's worth talking about who should be able to do what, and for what
reasons, when it comes to communication.  But that's another discussion.

Lying is absolutely not something I consider acceptable.  I'm not cool with
what I did, and neither should anyone else be.

This isn't a proud moment for me.  I'm sorry and I'm happy to be made
accountable.

Thanks,
Naomi


On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 10:01 PM Pecan Avocado <pecanavocado at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://lists.noisebridge.net/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>


-- 
Naomi Theora Most
naomi at nthmost.com
+1-415-728-7490

skype: nthmost

http://twitter.com/nthmost
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20190125/85379dd5/attachment.html>