Viewing permissions

Figured I'd make this into its own thread so we can more easily discuss this topic, since only half of the Commission have posted their thoughts on this topic so far.

At the moment, this subforum is readable by Citizens and up, but can only be posted in by the election commission (and, of course, forum staff). As well, the Discord channel can only be seen by the election commission and server staff (chat admins).

So far, myself, Elu, and COE have expressed interest in making the read permissions for both of these less restrictive, for better transparency.

COE has advocated that this forum have the same view and read permissions as the Elections subforum. This would make this subforum readable to the public, i.e., everyone who visits the forum. Elu agreed in a subsequent post, and while I would prefer keeping this forum readable to Residents and above, I'm alright with COE's idea as well. Are there any thoughts / objections on this from the remainder of the Commission or shall we go ahead with this approach?

As for the Discord channel, we can take a similar approach with that channel, where it can be set to be viewable by everyone (or Residents and up if we go with that approach), but only the Commission can post in it.

I will reiterate my position for clarity:

The Election Commission should be publicly visible. Publicly visible means just that: that anyone can see it, whether logged in or not.

I think that whoever can read the elections forum should be able to read this forum, as well as any off-forum proceedings of the EC.

I am in agreement with making EC discussions publicly viewable. I see no compelling reason to restrict viewership even to residents only - what might we discuss that residents can know but the general public can't?

Edit: It also makes sense for simplicity's sake. A non-citizen resident might want to discuss with other residents something they saw in this subforum, and there's not really a place on Discord at this point where they can do that out of the general public eye - there's only a private forum for citizens, not residents. And while we could create a new one for residents and above, that just seems... silly. Nothing we might say in relation to elections should be grounds for an espionage charge. The process of democracy is sometimes messy, but we don't need to hide that fact.

I have no problem with allowing the public to view our EC discussions. I just hope we don't bore them too much.