Re: [UUPoly-L] Public Archives Redux

["Catherine Deville" <CatDeville@cox.net>]

Dwight asks:  
> Those of us who moderate or manage the list from time to time receive notes
> from folks asking us to expunge evidence of their having been participants
> here. (List archives get indexed by search engines like Google, of course,
> because, as noted in the disclaimer which appears on every message, the list
> archives are public. However, the list of members' email addresses is
> private, so if you just receive and never send, no such publicly-indexed
> evidence will exist.)
> While this expunging is technically possible, the process is onerous because
> it's complicated and time-consuming. It also raises some ethical dilemmas,
> such as how to handle others' quoting of the requester's content in their
> own responses.
> 
> So I put the question to you all, dear fellow manager/moderators, and to you
> as well, dear contributors: Should we make the archives private?

Personally, I tend to think that it's better for groups having to do with
topics like relationships, intimacy and sex, including groups for the
discussion of polyamory to be private.  This is because people are more
comfortable being open and discussing the issues they need to discuss if they
have some sense of security and intimacy.  And any private group should
*always* have private archives, IMNSHO. 

That said, I consider it both ethical and reasonable for a group such as this
one to be public for the purposes of education, as long as the fact that the
group is public is disclosed. For myself, I'm out and have no children, so I
have no concerns about privacy issues on a personal level, but I believe that
those who do have concerns should be able to feel safe.

So, I lean towards a poly group being private unless there's a reason for it
to not be private (such as the fact that it's an educational resource, which I
believe is part of the UUPoly mission) and that whether the group is public or
private be clearly disclosed. 

NT, 
Cat