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

[Lori Bowen Ayre]

I'm also strongly in favor of "no."  1) very bad precedent. 2) slippery
slope.  3) how are kidding me????

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Sharp, Chris
<csharp at georgialibraries.org>wrote:

> 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/
>



-- 

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Lori Bowen Ayre // Library Technology Consultant
The Galecia Group // www.galecia.com
(707) 763-6869 // Lori.Ayre at galecia.com

<Lori.Ayre at galecia.com>Specializing in open source ILS solutions, RFID,
filtering,
workflow optimization, and materials handling
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