[Lincs] News Archive, and quiet LUG

[Ben Francis]

EN Baker wrote:

>well to be honest, on a purely personal note (using receny 
>examples) i would rather everyon and there dog couldnt read 
>all our details,
>
This really doesn't compute in my head at all. LLUG is a public mailing 
list on an internationally used network, any sense of privacy is an 
illusion. I see no advantage in password protecting the archives.

> for instance, because we are all great 
>friendly people Chris felt he could entrust us with his ip 
>address...
>
IP addresses are not listed in the mailing list archives.

> now i know it wouldnt take much for someone 
>malicious to sign up, but thats effort, and why should they 
>do that if they can just read public archives of messages 
>to get hold of information that could cause damage... 
>  
>
Cause damage? Do you mean send spam? This may be an issue to some people 
who use their main email address for mailing lists I suppose. However, I 
believe Marc is looking into mangling email addresses a bit better on 
the archives. I don't mind if the email address is stripped out of my 
posts completely in the archives, as long as my name remains. My Name 
and signature are enough for any *person* to get in touch with me if 
they feel the need.

I still maintain that the archives should not require registration to 
view. I wouldn't want to sign up to a mailing list before reading the 
archives first to check what kind of discussions happen there before 
hand. We are not a closed group, we should be open about what we do. 
Even if that means exposing email addresses until we can hack them out 
of the archives.

If anything, IRC conversations shouldn't be logged. Generally I take 
time to compose an email to a public list trying to keep it free of 
typos and avoid anything I wouldn't want my boss or my grandma to read! 
But IRC conversations are much quicker and not always such considered 
responses. I don't really like the idea of a permenant log of the 
equivalent to a group of people in a room having a chat. I certainly 
wouldn't want a transcript of every conversation I've had in a pub 
published on the Internet!

Just my personal opinion, of course.

-- 
Ben "tola" Francis            http://hippygeek.co.uk
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