[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Open-ILS email list archives - an unusual request

[Sharp, Chris]

Okay, all,

I very much appreciate your feedback on this.  Based on these opinions, I will respond to the person that we would not like to set a precedent for editing our archived communications and that we will be adding wording about the "public-ness" of our lists to the appropriate places.  

Thanks!!

Chris

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Galen Charlton" <gmc at esilibrary.com>
> To: "Evergreen Discussion Group" <open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 10:09:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Open-ILS email list archives - an unusual request
> Hi,
> 
> On Apr 5, 2011, at 9:22 AM, Sharp, Chris wrote:
> > 1) My first concern is whether it should be obvious that the
> > Open-ILS lists are "public", that that it's obvious what "public"
> > means. In our case it means that whatever you send to our lists is
> > received by all list subscribers and is archived on our web server,
> > then propagated to other sites like mail-archive.com and
> > markmail.org, which are in turn searchable via Google, Yahoo, Bing,
> > etc. This is not explicitly said anywhere on our web site, on the
> > subscription page(s), or in the welcome messages sent to new
> > subscribers. The closest I can find is on the Mailing List page at
> > http://evergreen-ils.org/listserv.php where it says "There are five
> > public mailing lists for people interested in Evergreen open source
> > library software." I have no idea whether even this verbiage was
> > present when this person subscribed given the organic nature of our
> > site. I intend to add this sort of wording to the appropriate places
> > in hopes of preventing future confusion of this sort. I welcome
> > everyone's input about this, including wording suggestions.
> 
> We can certainly add more text to the welcome message and the signup
> page to emphasize that the mailing lists are public, can be archived
> on multiple websites, and can show up on web searches. E.g.,
> 
> "The Evergreen mailing lists are public and publicly archived. Posts
> to the lists can show up on external mailing lists archives such as
> http://mail-archive.com as well as general search engines such as
> Google."
> 
> We could also link directly to the mailing lists archives from
> http://evergreen-ils.org/listserver.php to make it more clear.
> 
> And, to state the obvious, public mailing lists is one of the things
> that distinguish the open source ILS communities from some of their
> proprietary kin -- you don't need to sign a contract to join the
> user's community.
> 
> > 2) Secondly, unless there are other cases like this where email list
> > postings have been manually removed (and I'm not aware of any), we
> > currently have a complete archive of all the communications so far
> > in the Evergreen-ILS project and I am extremely wary of editing the
> > archives, for any reason. That said, the subjective value of this
> > particular thread is probably not useful to our history and
> > constitutes what is known as "administrivia", something that the
> > Mailman program itself tries to catch before it sends to the full
> > list since it has more to do with list administration than useful
> > content. More importantly than this particular case, I'm concerned
> > about where we draw the line on this. What if I decided to leave the
> > Evergreen community and would like all of my posts removed? I would
> > assume that I'm stuck with having them archived for perpetuity. I
> > don't want to set a precedent for micro-managing our email (or chat)
> > archives.
> >
> > So, do I (we) approve the deletion of the thread in question,
> > possibly corrupting a complete archive of Evergreen's email history,
> > but respecting this privacy concern? Or do I (we) apologetically say
> > that we want to keep a complete archive of list emails and will do
> > our best in the future to communicate better about the "public"
> > nature of our lists?
> 
> Well, regardless of what we do, we can make no guarantee to the
> individual concerned that removing the message from our archive will
> cause it to be removed from other archives or web search engines.
> 
> My preference is that we adopt a policy of leaving the archives alone
> except in really exceptional cases. Certainly I'd see no value in
> letting somebody repudiate a long posting history; where the line gets
> fuzzier is in the case of one-offs. As you describe the request you
> received, I can't say that I understand why it is such a big deal for
> that person. On the other hand, I can envision scenarios where it
> might matter, having worked with librarians who were loath to
> prematurely reveal that they were considering or implementing
> Evergreen. I'd say that if somebody *promptly* requests a clawback of
> a post made in error and can demonstrate to one of the list admins
> that leaving the post in the archives would result in actual harm to
> the poster, that should be considered. In the current situation of
> somebody waiting over a year to make this request, I don't think so.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> VP, Data Services
> Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
> email: gmc at esilibrary.com
> direct: +1 352-215-7548
> skype: gmcharlt
> web: http://www.esilibrary.com/

-- 
Chris Sharp
PINES Program Manager
Georgia Public Library Service
1800 Century Place, Suite 150
Atlanta, Georgia 30345
(404) 235-7147
csharp at georgialibraries.org
http://pines.georgialibraries.org/