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

[Andrew Sullivan Cant]

I have not done any robots.txt or SEO stuff recently, so I do not know
how respectful the current crop of search engines are.

But that being said, would updating our robots.txt to disallow the
search engines be useful?
We could note that in the mailing list page, but also state more clearly
that the archives are publicly accessible.

I do appreciate that there is a difference between publishing things and
publishing and promoting them. (e.g., someone's address being published
somewhere online vs doxxing them to a specific group)


Andrew


On 2018-11-28 3:51 p.m., Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc 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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> 
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