Thanks for starting this discussion, Jny!
Maybe some people remember I even thought the privacy rules for the invite forum somewhat of an overreaction, although I basically see the reasons for them. So the following should not be too much of a surprise.
1. What expectation of privacy did you hold when you joined the board? Was it your understanding that conversations in the Turf were confidential?
In the beginning of this board, it was of course assumed that all conversations here were as confidential as e-mail or IM-conversation.
For me personally that meant not offering any kind of information on what has been said here.
Since the messageboard changed into an, albeit closed, meeting place for friends, we have (I thought) adopted a policy of 'each member should act according to their own discretion and integrity as to what they share with others.
However, when we invite people we also ask ourselves whether they are likely to indulge in gossip - "completely trustworthy" or so has often been an argument for inviting someone - so we somehow expect that discretion and integrity to be of a pretty high level.
Edit: I remember that in wilko's "my presence on this board"-thread, he asked about how "secret" things were supposed to be, and I answered giving the abovementioned policy, which was then confirmed by Alandriel.
The thread appears to be gone, though, (or maybe I'm too tired to find it), so I can't quote.
Just before starting big with the invites we also occasionally discussed how to deal with giving out info, too, and the answer invariably was "trust your own discretion" - don't remember where to look for these, I'm afraid.
2. Is there a difference between cutting and pasting comments from the Turf so that non-members can read them, and simply conveying the gist of a B77 conversation to a non-member?
While I agree with Sassy that we are all inclined to gossip - share info in a completely thoughtless way, and that therefore copying and pasting somehow are more deliberate, I don't really think it's a big enough difference. The difference comes, as others also said, with intent.
That's very hard to determine, of course, but IMO it's an offense to gossip or copy with an intent to hurt someone (whether it's people outside by letting them know hurtful things others said about them or whether it's members by disclosing who said what, if that's something negative), but it's not an offense to just tell someone what's going on in general, or copy a joke or something harmless like that.
3. Should there be a formal consequence for breaches of confidentiality that do not have to do with the Invite Forum? If yes, what do you think the consequence should be?
No, I don't think there should be consequences, because I don't think we should force anyone to keep things confidential.
Like I said above, it's been repeated by several people in different threads at different times, that it's up to anyone's choice what they share. We just never expected anyone to copy and paste anything that could be harmful to a member here, because we thought everybody here would have the best interest of everybody else at heart. We thought it was self-evident that people we invited because we trusted them would see where the limits are before chatty behaviour turns into harmful gossip.
Maybe that was naive, but I still think it's a good policy.
Like some people have said before, you just shouldn't expect anything to stay secret if you just tell it to one friend IRL and ask them not to share it. Things get out in spite of that. Just try not to be guilty of it yourself if you don't like it.
So I don't think we should now say we were wrong and we expect people not to tell anything of what was said here to any non-member - it's just not right - LOL, I'm too tired to think of an explanation why.
4. How might we enforce confidentiality, or at least convey to all members that it is expected?
In light of the above, I don't think anything else needs to be done.
5. Should we actively seek to discover who has breached the confidentiality of the board so far?
I don't see how that could be achieved, even if it served any purpose to find out, which I doubt it would.