[TAG] found something in the attic...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Benjamin A. Okopnik (ben at linuxgazette.net):

> However, as Rick Moen says in one of his observations, that immutable
> stupidity tends to instantly evaporate when people start getting fired.

Oh, _that_ guy?  I know for a fact that he got referred to "How to Ask
Smart Questions" the other day.  He must be an idiot.  (/me checks with 
Dan Bernstein.)  Yep.

> Y'know, I'd completely forgotten about that. Is there a reason that they
> _aren't_ public? Unless there's something I'm missing, they _definitely_
> should be.

The previously rationale cited is two-fold:

1.  Someone, somewhere (a non-subscriber) might send us information 
that is not for publication and not intended to be public.

2.  A large percentage of the population still believes in "hide from 
spammers" tactics and object to their e-mail addresses getting included
in public mailing list archives without their explicit consent.  (Some
object to it even with the sort of address obfuscation that Mailman can
be configured to do.)

I find these justifications insufficient, and would advocate changing
our policy at the earliest possible opportunity.  (I'd be glad to enable 
Mailman address obfuscation of the form "rick at linuxmafia.com", not
because I think it's a good idea but rather to reduce some other
people's objections.) 

I also volunteer to field any and all cranky e-mails we receive
demanding that X allegedly private e-mail addresses, telephone numbers,
etc. be redacted from the archive.  Doing so honestly isn't difficult: 
You snip something out using $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE from the list's
cumulative mbox, then re-run the Pipermail archiver, to rebuild the 
HTML archive from the mbox.

-- 
Cheers,                        A: No.  
Rick Moen                      Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? 
rick at linuxmafia.com