[kwlug-disc] Should kwlug-disc archives be private?

[Bob Jonkman]

Strong bias to keeping the archives public.

I've used the public links to threads in the archives many times to
provide advice for people looking for the best computery widget.  A
private archive makes that impossible, and would rot the existing links
people have bookmarked already.

And there are (were) subscription bots that receive all messages and
create public archives. Sadly gmane is gone, but I'm sure there are
others. Making the archives private does not make the messages private.
And, as someone pointed out, *anyone* can forward their hoarded messages!

And address obfuscation doesn't work. Is there anyone on this list who
doesn't receive spam? Anyone who doesn't receive spam already has
adequate filtration and doesn't benefit from obfuscation.

And what about liability? A bad attempt at creating "privacy" is far
worse than having public archives and leaving no doubt that there's no
privacy.

Mailing lists that allow public subscriptions are public lists.  Making
the archives private achieves nothing but grief.

--Bob.


On 2018-11-26 3:45 a.m., Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
> A few weeks ago a list member contacted me privately. This person was
> uncomfortable participating on the mailing list because the archives
> are public, and show up in search engine results. 
> 
> A long time ago, this made sense. Stack Exchange did not exist, so
> sometimes people would search for solutions to technical problems and
> find them in our archives. That is much less the case now. 
> 
> There is also the issue of email address obfuscation. Mailman does a
> terrible job of this, and I am sure that our addresses are easily
> harvested by spammers. This issue came up many years ago as well, but
> we did not do anything about this. 
> 
> On the other hand, KWLUG is a public group that advocates FLOSS, and
> FLOSS has a bias towards transparency. 
> 
> I am not sure what the right decision is here, and I am not sure how
> we go about making that decision. I would prefer that this not turn
> into a bikeshed situation, but action by dictatorial fiat seems wrong
> too.
> 
> So, for those who care: would you be offended if we made list archives
> private? Why?
> 
> Would you be offended if we kept list archives public? Why?
> 
> - Paul
> 

-- 
Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>          Phone: +1-519-635-9413
SOBAC Microcomputer Services             http://sobac.com/sobac/
Software   ---   Office & Business Automation   ---   Consulting
GnuPG Fngrprnt:04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA




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