Sorry. Meant to get back to this sooner.
On the plus side, I think the damage here would be to the integrity of the content on Barbelith rather than to anyone's profile - I'm not sure where you're getting that it by [its] very existence continue[s] to compromise the IT security of both current and past members - it doesn't, really.
Okay, I may have to back up a bit because I was learning on the hop, but that seemed to me to be the big bone of contention as laid out by Mordant and XK. Mordant's post was redacted, both here and where it was made, so I can't point to it. But XK's should still be there in the create new accounts thread. If it's not a problem with what Mordant laid out, then I can't think of any other reason why that information would have been taken out of the public domain.
If the problem with flagging the security hole isn't that it would attract trolls to those with access to those holes and compromise their security, then I might be missing what the problem is then. How would it compromise the integrity of Barbelith's content? If the hole is simply a way of registering new users, then revealing it could only do one of two things, as far as I see.
1. Allow the addition of new members through some fair and easily accessible way.
2. Allow new members through sneaky ways of subterfuge, which would be either through current members in possession of the link passing it about, or through trolls targeting those members to get to it.
As far as I can see, there isn't much that can be done to target the integrity of Barbelith's content at this point seeing as Barbelith barely even exists. It only has a memory of values and standards at the moment, it doesn't have a practice of them because there's nothing to practice them on. Similarly, we have no moderators because there is nothing to moderate.
I'm of the opinion that the only way to get Barbelith up and running again (and fill the moderator list up again by giving moderators something to engage with) is to start exercising it. The means to do that are here. It's plainly obvious, because he's proved over and over again, that Tom is not going to make a decision on this unless something is happening that forces his hand out of necessity.
I think grant is totally on point. I think that a critical mass of moderators could moderate trolls into submission. I think if that proved not to be the case, it's also been proven that the issue of troll abuse is about the only one that gets any sort of action from Tom.
Opening the doors, which we can do, could be the death of the place. The way things are just now is the death of the place. I'm not sure what there is to lose. I'm not sure what we are protecting against at the moment. If it's not the security of the members, what is it?
Is it the Barbelith archives? Nobody is posting to them or reading them, and at any rate, they can't really be compromised without a much deeper breach of security. Is it the standard of discussion? We don't have any. |
