Jan,

I was planning to state the reasons for the conference
policy on the issue of privacy in a well crafted note
later today. You seem to have preempted my role as
convener and conference host, so I will post now.

In this particular instance, I sent you a short note to
reiterate whatI asked you in an earlier note and to reiterate
the list owner's note on etiquette.

I will explain why some notes are best managed privately:

The short version is that any list with 1,200 members
would soon break down if every private note were shared
publicly. My note to you was the equivalent of a note from
a conference chair to a speaker at a conference session. It
is for the chair to decide when this note is appropriate in
public and when private. There was nothing of importance
for all in my note to you. I was shaping a proper public note
later. At the same time, your many flurries of notes have
caused some problem to others, and as convener, I was
reminding you of what I wrote to you before and what
David Durling wrote to the list.

If every note from a session chair to any conference speaker
were read aloud, no conference would do anything but
manage side talk.

On a list with 1,200 subscribers, posting everything written
privately by any one subscriber to another would soon
make the conference impossible. Most of our 1,200
subscribers would leave long before then. In fact, the
JISCMAIL system would stop all list traffic once we hit
the daily limit of 200 posts, and if all back-channel traffic
went pubic, we would soon exceed that limit.

In my opinion, your view on this issue is a somewhat
misplaced version of democracy. This is not the equivalent
of Woodrow's Wilson's call for open covenants openly
arrived at in international diplomacy. We are conferring
here, not deciding. We are not even deciding anything
about design or design education other than our own views.
This is not a deliberative assembly. It is a conference.

As David Durling noted, we have over 1,200 subscribers
for what is perhaps the largest active list for design
or design research on the net. You can see the other lists
by visiting the JISCMAIL archives to see if anyone has
developed a list that has wider involvement, greater
participation, or longer durable activity.

List policies have something to do with this -- and with the
quality of membership and participation.

As convener, I am responsible for conference policy. As
list owner, David Durling is responsible for list policy.
We request that you respect the policies established for
this conference and this list.

It is not for you to decide when it is helpful to post my
notes to the list. That is my decision.

As an ordinary list member, I have the right to expect that
a private communication will be kept private. This is the
nearly universal standard on ALL scholarly lists.

As convener, it is my responsibility to judge when it is
appropriate to write to the whole list, and when to write
to a single subscriber. In this case, you were posting what
seemed to be the beginning of a flurry of short notes, and I
wanted to write to you before taking time to compose a
note on the reason for distinguishing between public and
private notes.

In this particular case, I had already written to the list on
the topic of long tails. Most people do understand it. When
people forget -- as a few have done -- a private reminder is
usually enough. Since you wrote back the last time to say
that you were having time problems that made you a bit
careless, I framed this request by pointing to the fact that
long tails and careless posting create time problems for other
people. In my view, few others were not having the same
difficulties.

I will repeat the policy of this conference and this list: it
is inappropriate to publish private notes.

You may establish any policy you wish for a conference
you convene on another list. Anyone who wishes to join
your conference will naturally be expected to accept your
policies.

On this list, I work with and accept the policies established
here. These policies have worked well for us so far, and
they will continue to be the policies of this conference.

There is a distinction made between public and private
communication on a scholarly list such as this, and we
welcome subscribers who accept and respect this policy.

Ken Friedman

--

Jan Coker wrote:

--snip--

Thank you Ken for the critique, I do appreciate the time issue and had thought
I had deleted the rest of the email, apologies. I am forwarding your message to
the forum so as to share the information with others who may be having the same
difficulties. I actually thought it would simplify things for everyone if the
responses were short and identified who they responded to in order to allow
people to read or not read as they chose.
For the interest of others, below is Ken's private email to me.

--snip--.





--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
Faculty of Art, Media, and Design
Staffordshire University