[TOS] About the POSSE cohort list privacy settings

[Matthew Jadud]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 01:51, Kevin Mark <kevin.mark at verizon.net> wrote:
> material still being private. So do you think your list is going to be
> permanently private?

Hi Mark,

My hope is that the list isn't permanent at all. I think (but could be
wrong) that the spirit of such a list is for private discussion of
current/timely events. Anything that's longer term than "right now" is
(1) almost certainly not a "private" conversation, (2) will benefit
from community input, and (3) should be killed/nuked/purged after some
finite period of time. The private list should have no archival
qualities, IMHO. (Nor do I expect it to have any archival value.)

Because we have to deal with FERPA and other issues, it is good for
the faculty to have a private bail-out, but we're all committed to
working in an open space. I think, in this case, you have to trust the
faculty involved to use their professional judgement as to when
something *needs* to be private, and if something doesn't, then trust
us to encourage each-other to put it on the main list/the wiki/etc.

In a nutshell, if we're trying to bring FOSS into our classroom
context, there will be little value if we don't similarly open our own
educational context to the community. We know that, but we also know
that sometimes we have to discuss things privately for reasons beyond
our control.

I don't know if that helps or not.

Cheers,
Matt