Avoid Private Discussions

Even after you've taken the project public, you and the other founders will often find yourselves wanting to settle difficult questions by private communications among an inner circle. This is especially true in the early days of the project, when there are so many important decisions to make, and, usually, few volunteers qualified to make them. All the obvious disadvantages of public list discussions will loom palpably in front of you: the delay inherent in email conversations, the need to leave sufficient time for consensus to form, the hassle of dealing with naive volunteers who think they understand all the issues but actually don't (every project has these; sometimes they're next year's star contributors, sometimes they stay naive forever), the person who can't understand why you only want to solve problem X when it's obviously a subset of larger problem Y, and so on. The temptation to make decisions behind closed doors and present them as faits accomplis, or at least as the firm recommendations of a united and influential voting block, will be great indeed.

Don't do it.

As slow and cumbersome as public discussions can be, they're almost always preferable in the long run. Making important decisions in private is like spraying contributor repellant on your project. No serious volunteer would stick around for long in an environment where a secret council makes all the big decisions.

I believe in finding a solution - looking at it, perhaps giving it a test run - and reviewing if it is making the difference. None of us have a crystal ball to look into the future so we can't predict what for example creating a new forum for XOOPS issues and heated debate might bring.

Personally I would love to have the heated debates off the front page - out of the 'recent posts' list - so they can only be found by looking for them if you want to join in. But all members need access to them - So a new category set up in such a way may enable this to happen could work - why not try it out?. my only reservation is It will take a specially skilled moderator to manage that forum with diplomacy using xoopsiquette as the guideline. We get misinterpreted as the people with power - truly I see my only power as asking people to follow Xoopsiquette - that was the job I was asked to do.

I am no longer a "privileged" user, but there is information in my head, shared by Skalpa himself, that is only known to a small number of people.

There are several private forums for administrators and moderators on xoops.org, just not for all registered users (AFAIK).