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

[Benjamin Tompkins]

I have used archives of a mailing list to get an idea of the community
involved before either a) posting or b) joining.

On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 3:51 PM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

>
> 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
>
>
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