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

[Paul Nijjar]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 12:06:21AM -0500, Andrew Sullivan Cant wrote:
> 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. 
> 
> Did they give any more details about their concerns?
> (e.g., email being published, content of the messages being published)

The person in question was surprised/dismayed to do a DuckDuckGo
search on their name and find the archives show up. Their perception
of the list was that it was not as public as it is. As a result they
are reluctant to participate on the list in the future. 

I see the point. There is a qualitative difference between making our
posts public to a community of people and making our posts public so
that unknown giant entities can vacuum up our data for surveillance
and/or profit. 

We tend to dismiss such distinctions (as Chris notes,
anybody could publish all the archives, or CSIS/Facebook could join
the mailing list) but I feel those distinctions of intent are real. We
just don't have a good way of discussing them. 

Here are two followup questions: 

- Regardless of philosophical positions as to whether the archives
  ought to be open, are there additional stories where people have
  actually used the openness of the archives for some purpose? Bob
  gave us one example when he talked about linking to particular
  posts. Are there others?

- Are there members of this list who would prefer the list be private
  but are not participating in the discussion because they feel
  intimidated by the strong stance expressed, or because the list is
  public and they are concerned about their privacy? (People who are
  less concerned about the archives being public are exactly the
  people who are more inclined to participate in this discussion,
  after all.) If you are in this camp, please contact me offline. I
  will take a tally of you and relay your concerns (without your name)
  to this thread. 


- Paul