Stale Docs Memberships

[Ben Cotton]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 5:03 PM, Cristian Ciupitu
<cristian.ciupitu at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Aren't all actions reversible? Don't we have version control in git
> repositories and also on the wiki? I'm thinking that in the worse case
> scenario, the invalid content will exist only for a short period of
> time.

Sure, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't protect ourselves against it.
Invalid information isn't as much of a concern, as that generally can
be rolled back easily. But what about the case of malicious activity?
Let's say Sparks snaps one day and posts libelous or threatening
content. Sure that, too, can be reverted but the entire time it's up
it reflects poorly on us and could potentially create legal issues.

I'll grant that such a scenario is pretty unlikely (not the Sparks
snapping part, but the part where he posts malicious content), but
revoking unneeded access is still a good practice. If someone gets
their git privileges revoked and they actually notice, it's not hard
to give them privileges back. Heck, a stale member policy might
motivate people to ensure they make a contribution sufficient to keep
their bit set.

One thing we haven't touched on is revoking membership in the Docs
group. I explicitly left it out of my earlier post because it doesn't
really grant any docs-related privilege. However, for some people it's
the difference between being able to vote in elections and not. Is it
appropriate for someone who has made no direct contribution in 5 years
to continue to be able to vote? That's a decision for the Board and
the community at-large, but it's another potential impact of the
implementation details of a stale member policy.


BC

-- 
Ben Cotton