[HCoop-Discuss] Openness of mailing lists (only archive last N days?)

[Adam Megacz]

Davor Ocelic <docelic at hcoop.net> writes:
> a) making HCoop information accessible to random people who search
> the web for something unrelated, and then find hcoop posts among the 
> search results.

When this issue first came up, my immediate reaction was "no, don't
deprive me of my beloved gmane!"

But, more recently, I've been starting to come around to the idea that
I would prefer it if my -sysadmin postings were not available to
Google five years from now.  Especially since I'm one of only four
people on the internet who use the six-character identifier "megacz".

I'm just saying that it's a bit of a hassle to put every posting I
make through the mental filter of "gee, how will this response look to
people who know me ten years from now" -- in addition to the mostly
automatic "gee, how will this look to the message's intended audience"
filter.

Let me propose a compromise:

  1. Kick gmane and other archivers off the sysadmin mailing list

  2. Make all archives available to subscribers

  3. Make only the last N days worth of archives visible to "teh intarwebs"
     (I can imagine N being somewhere around 60 or so)

  4. Declare that it is bad manners for anybody on the mailing list to
     archive messages more than N days old in a public place (we can't
     really stop them, but we can frown vigorously).

I don't think there are any technical hurdles to #3, or if there are,
I'm willing to script our way around them.

Also, the current poll doesn't distinguish this approach from others
which are likely to be unpopular for secrecy/transparency reasons.

  - a