Avoiding the cabal mentality does not mean having every single conversation in public, ever. Transparency is great, but it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be comfortable with full transparency, all the time.

Also, one-to-one communication builds intimacy and trust that multiway communication cannot. Especially as new participants are building confidence, it's vitally important to build private relationships between individuals. Certainly it is appropriate to encourage important conversations to be moved into public forums, especially conversations about actions that will affect others. But private chats are important too, and often useful for eliciting insights that help move the more public conversations forward.

In particular, private conversations can be critical to resolving conflicts within communities, and community leaders who are seen as responsible for the community's health should be comfortable taking the parties aside. There have been many examples in the Fedora community of conflicts that were better resolved in private, and there will be more in the future.