[Noisebridge-discuss] notes from a sad slacker
David Fine
dfine at sonic.net
Sat Jan 26 03:13:10 UTC 2019
It sounds like Naomi used admin powers to make Slack work more reliably.
Nobody was removed from the discussion, nothing deleted. She did however
demote a few people who had a record of censorship and admin overreach.
Those people are going to be unhappy that they lost a power, but who
wants power anyway? The moment Naomi archives an active channel to
stifle a conversation they don't like, I will get out my pitchfork. But
as she's been a benevolent dictator (and Slack's model requires
dictators), the status quo is that everyone who wants to communicate on
there is able to. That's not awful.
--DF
On 1/25/19 8:28 PM, Naomi Most 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
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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
> <http://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
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>
>
>
> --
> Naomi Theora Most
> naomi at nthmost.com <mailto:naomi at nthmost.com>
> +1-415-728-7490
>
> skype: nthmost
>
> http://twitter.com/nthmost
>
>
>
> --
> Naomi Theora Most
> naomi at nthmost.com <mailto:naomi at nthmost.com>
> +1-415-728-7490
>
> skype: nthmost
>
> http://twitter.com/nthmost
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://lists.noisebridge.net/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
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