I didn’t know about the Gittip issue, but I heard about Shanley when she and her MVC co-founder went on Hanselminutes, and again when the Twitter blocking issue sprung up on Hacker News, and I have to say I really like the cut of her jib. It takes guts to be so public and hard-hitting about these issues, especially if you commit the sin of being a woman. She can be harsh, but like the Brecht wrote,

The headlong stream is termed violent
But the river bed hemming it in is
Termed violent by no one.

I don’t really have a strong opinion on radical transparency, other than the fact that my appreciation for privacy makes me feel uneasy about it. Selfishly, I’m pleased that there are reasons higher than my preference for being left alone to care for the protection of people’s identities, but I confess that I probably wouldn’t have considered these matters. My only mitigating attribute is that I usually shut up and listen when such issues are raised.

Regarding the broadening of my horizons, MVC itself seems like a good source, but I have to admit I still haven’t read any of its articles. I did find another publication which is unlike everything I generally read – which mostly pertains to tech, startups and economic theory – which I’ve been quite enjoying, called, n+1 magazine. Now that they have a digital-only issue, I’m seriously considering subscribing.

I could probably write a wall of text here, but I think I’d better limit myself to this observation for now: the idea that organizational transparency is necessarily antithetical to personal privacy is bizarre to me. I’ve written in favor of radical fractured pseudonymity before, and I’ll probably continue until ‘nyms and handles become irrelevant.