[Noisebridge-discuss] notes from a sad slacker

Fri Jan 25 21:19:25 UTC 2019

Tbh, Naomi has always come across as the least power abbusive person out of
the entire private clubhouse roster (I don't even place her in that group
of friends myself).

Can we possibly see the entire admin deck currently?  Maybe we should limit
admins to that board of ppl who were originally not supposed to interfere
with Noisebridge?  Communities are hard, but I think it's best to manage
them in the absence of uneven power distributions.

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 2:28 PM Naomi Most <naomi at nthmost.com wrote:

> With regards to this point:
>
> "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."
>
> Yeah, I agree with that.  That's why I don't think unilaterally archiving
> a channel where a discussion is taking place is good community behavior.
>
> At any rate, I'm not super pleased with being the "landlord" of Slack.  If
> it can be transferred to a non-person entity with a set of people who have
> keys to it, that would be better.
>
> --Naomi
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 12:18 PM Naomi Most <naomi at nthmost.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>
>
> --
> Naomi Theora Most
> naomi at nthmost.com
> +1-415-728-7490
>
> skype: nthmost
>
> http://twitter.com/nthmost
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://lists.noisebridge.net/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>
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