[hackerspaces] Abuse Of Power

[Paul Bohm]

Astera,

I've had two people who were doing core work on the site complain about you
removing their access without consulting anyone. You don't have that
authority.

And I remember very well that night at CCC Congress 2008, where you told me
how much you enjoyed the attention you get, because you've set things up in
such a way that they have to go through you to accomplish things. I told
you back then that's at odds with a philosophy of participation.

I am not actively maintaining the site right now, but I am unhappy that it
has been so badly maintained that people regularly email me offering money
to fix things like the broken pagination.

I'll stay out of this as much as possible, but I'll do what I can do
empower people to actual repair the site and build upon it. There's a lot
of people (like Eric) who use the site on an almost daily basis, so it
needs to work.

</soap>

-Enki


On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:56 AM, astera <astera at hackerspaces.org> wrote:

> Dear Paul,
>
> I got a couple alerts while I was at a conference in Amsterdam, and
> two emails about broken parts, and after taking a look and seeing
> someone unknown access my server and have root privs as I got back, I
> sent an email to the tech@ mailing list and removed sudoers access
> until I got a statement from fh. His account's access was restored
> within minutes after his reply. As I would like to know who gives
> access to whom on my servers, I would've very much hoped to get
> informed by you about this previously, personally or via the tech@
> mailinglist - because that's what it's there for. No, I do not rejoice
> in alerts while I'm away that leave me clueless about why they were
> generated, as I'm sure you would not, either.
>
> On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Paul Bohm <bohmps at gmail.com> wrote:
> > While we're almost done with this, the site got spammed heavily again.
> Flo
> > asked me if he could step in, and I said - well, the site is being
> spammed.
> > He fixed it
>
> Well, actually no. I tried something else today as the StopForumSpam
> integration doesn't work any more, and we'll see how that goes.
>
> > and also deployed the fixes that will make pagination work again
>
> Which I am more than thankful for, and that's also what I wrote to fh.
>
> > but she seems to have gotten
> > angry at FH and removed his and my access. At some point she said "you
> have
> > access again, enki not".
>
> Enki, you have access, as does fh, but until you learn to use the
> tech@ mailing list to at least have the gracefulness to let me know
> that you've asked someone else to fix something and give him root, I
> do not see how I can trust you with such privileges.
>
> > This isn't the first such story I've heard. Eric Michaud (who wrote a
> > sizable up to half of the stories at (http://blog.hackerspaces.org/)
> also
> > told me she removed his access much earlier for power struggle reasons.
> > (Eric is in cc)
>
> I have never before deliberately removed someone from sudoers. We
> have, however, migrated the wiki twice and home directories weren't
> always fully restored on new servers. As with every other bug that's
> brought to the tech@ mailinglist's attention, an email from Eric
> explaining he needs access would've sufficed.
>
> > it's not cool to sabotage others who actually do the
> > work, when you've let the site languish for years.
>
> I am not sabotaging anything. Without going down the same accusational
> path you have, I'd like to point out that letting something languish
> does not involve caring for the hardware, backups, fixing small bugs,
> or helping people with questions or access to data for their projects.
>
> > Sorry to put the laundry out in the open, but this just isn't a way to
> deal
> > with people.
>
> Exactly.
>
> Hack on,
> /astera
>
> PS: I will not spam the lists included in /cc any further by replying
> to this thread.
>
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