I humbly ask people here to put down the nuclear fly swatters. This particularly refers to people insisting on a name/signature policy for all posters. I get that a fault has happened in this community. However, we do not need to respond like we do in technical situations when we face a security intrusion, code failure to bad data, or inefficiency due to edge cases. To put it more succinctly, we don't need to make our code of conduct consider and prevent all possible threats all at once. Not only is it unreasonable, but the extra "protection" might cause degraded performance.

In recent months, an incident did happen due to unclear identity. The person doing the sexual harassment survey failed to identify herself. There was no contact information in her message nor in the survey itself. Additionally, the C4L list's configuration obscured her email. Thus, we had a person collecting data on a sensitive topic with a vulnerable population. In such cases, the C4L community should mandate identity and communication outlets in some fashion for people soliciting information especially in terms of sensitive research.

Let's just focus on patching that particular security issue for the time being. We don't need to consider all types of threats and prevent them right now. There's plenty to argue and discuss just on this topic. To what degree of info seeking requires identity? Can I ask about opinions on MARC editors without issuing an IRB statement? I'd say yes. If you wanted to publish on it, that's different. Can a person who does a survey on a sensitive topic maintain their anonymity under an alias email? That's a finer point and one I waffle on. I want to say yes but there needs to be more there I think.

If it helps, think of keeping anonymity in the C4L community as a good/bad thing just like encryption. There's the old saying that one wouldn't want an evil empire having encryption, but at the same time, you'd want the freedom rebels there to have encryption. Same goes for anonymity. Anonymity can allow some to hurt and harass, but it can also be a means for people to reach out for help and support in safe ways.

Katherine Deibel | PhD
Inclusion & Accessibility Librarian
Syracuse University Libraries
T 315.443.7178
[log in to unmask]
222 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244
Syracuse University


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2019 11:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] From the Community Support Squad wrt "Note [admiistratativia]"

i'll put in another word strongly against a name/signature policy.

as professionals who work regularly with authorship, surely we can understand that people use and attach their ideas to many names in both private and public life for a wide range of reasons. the argument that restricting naming here would improve the quality or civility of posts appears unsupported. absent a compelling need for the restriction, any rule would seem only to provide tools for excluding certain people and topics.

to take it a step further, and reading between the lines a bit, excluding people and topics seems to be the precise goal of the rule. the discussion has already drifted into adjudicating hypothetical topics to be excluded:
"my boss is a baddy, and here's why..." is a trivializing example, but i'd put it to you that in many circumstances this is a perfectly reasonable issue to raise publicly and anonymously to a professional community. unless our goal is to tip the balance of power further in favor of baddy bosses, that is. that this is coming up in the current context makes me worry very much about which topics we'd attempt to filter in practice.

finally, i think it's regrettable that demands for discussants to identify themselves came up in the prior thread. even in this case (with legitimate concerns at hand about methodolgy and the nature of the information being
solicited) it seemed to me that these demands did more to intimidate than anything else. i fear adopting this as policy would codify that intimidation.

best,

tom

On Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:14 AM Tom Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> i'll put in another word strongly against a name/signature policy.
>
> as professionals who work regularly with authorship, surely we can
> understand that people use and attach their ideas to many names in
> both private and public life for a wide range of reasons. the argument
> that restricting naming here would improve the quality or civility of
> posts appears unsupported. absent a compelling need for the
> restriction, any rule would seem only to provide tools for excluding certain people and topics.
>
> to take it a step further, and reading between the lines a bit,
> excluding people and topics seems to be the precise goal of the rule.
> the discussion has already drifted into adjudicating hypothetical topics to be excluded:
> "my boss is a baddy, and here's why..." is a trivializing example, but
> i'd put it to you that in many circumstances this is a perfectly
> reasonable issue to raise publicly and anonymously to a professional
> community. unless our goal is to tip the balance of power further in
> favor of baddy bosses, that is. that this is coming up in the current
> context makes me worry very much about which topics we'd attempt to filter in practice.
>
> finally, i think it's regrettable that demands for discussants to
> identify themselves came up in the prior thread. even in this case
> (with legitimate concerns at hand about methodolgy and the nature of
> the information being
> solicited) it seemed to me that these demands did more to intimidate
> than anything else. i fear adopting this as policy would codify that
> intimidation.
>
> best,
>
> tom
>
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 6:23 AM Peter Murray <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I read the LSOFT page describing the DMARC aliases, and it seems like
>> there is a good technical reason for doing so. To disallow the
>> LISTSERV-supplied DMARC aliases would prevent some participant's mail
>> from being delivered (or would have it downgraded to "junk" status by
>> the receiving mail agent).
>>
>> Regarding the use of aliases in general, there are good reasons to
>> use them (as have been described in other messages in this thread).
>> The use of an alias is a signal of a sort, and readers can take that
>> signal into account as they read and consider the content of the
>> message. I wouldn't want to see aliases banned from the list. I
>> think it is also a health practice to encourage the use of email
>> signatures whenever possible so community members get to know each other.
>>
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> --
>> Peter Murray
>> Open Source Community Advocate
>> Index Data, LLC
>> On Jul 12, 2019, 11:07 AM -0400, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]>,
>> wrote:
>> > With the advent of some sort of new SMTP enhancement called DMARC,
>> > it
>> is possible to post to LISTSERV applications (like ours) and have
>> your email address obfuscated, like above. This is apparently a
>> feature. [0] Yes, direct replies to an address like
>> [log in to unmask] do make it back to the
>> original sender, but without some sort of signature can be very
>> difficult to know to whom one is replying.
>> >
>> > I think any poster to the mailing ought to be easily identifiable.
>> > One
>> ought to be able to easily know the name of the poster, their
>> affiliation, and their email address. Such makes things: 1) more
>> transparent, and 2) lends credibility to the post. Even if I don't
>> sign this message you can see that my name is Eric Morgan, I work for
>> Notre Dame, and my address is [log in to unmask] The posting above works
>> because there is/was a full signature. Postings from
>> [log in to unmask] are difficult to swallow but I can live
>> with them. But postings from EM <
>> [log in to unmask]> with no signature I
>> think are not respectful. Remember, "On the Internet, nobody knows
>> you are a dog." [1]
>> >
>> > [0] dmarc - https://www.lsoft.com/news/dmarc-issue1-2018.asp
>> > [1] dog -
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_
>> dog
>> >
>>
>