Monster Aquatic Dinosaur Leopleurodon

To: no-list@yahoogroups.com

From: Dennis Budd <nitewing@ku.edu>

Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 17:56:45 -0600 (Central Standard Time)

Subject: [no-list] List privacy

I was out of town and off-list when Xxx wrote that one of his NO-LIST messages had been forwarded to a government official by someone on this list. When I returned a few days later, I was as dismayed as anyone else to learn of it. It is quite ironic to me that this happened only a week after I had written a long message to NO-DESK concerning past E-mail privacy violations associated with the National Desk effort.

There is a long tradition on the Internet of a set of principles for network etiquette, or "netiquette", to facililate communication particularly in group settings.

I first started participating on the Internet in 1993, ten years ago. These principles were solidly established then, and have held in the time since. All of them have a solid basis. However, the Internet has continued to grow, adding many persons who are unfamiliar with the principles, and some who don't even care.

One of the major principles of Netiquette that I have borne witness to, and have affirmed myeslf, is that messages to a list are not to be forwarded to another list or to any other public forum without the permission of the author of the message. Those lists for which this is not the case will explicitly state this in their published guidelines so that members will know up-front that there should be no expectation of privacy on the list.

Another of the principles is that private messages should not be forwarded or quoted to a list without the explicit permission of the message's author. There are very few lists for which this is not the case, as it is pretty fundamental to the reasonable functioning of any group of persons working together.

The forwarding of list messages to private parties is a murkier area and varies between lists depending on the nature of the list and the degree of confidentiality expected. For lists whose functioning depends on confidentiality it is expected that all communication will be kept within the list. I participate in two personal sharing lists for which this is in fact the expectation.

You would think that common sense would apply here. I myself would not hesitate to forward the "alerts" posted here from time to time to other individuals or lists who would be concerned with the issues they address. I myself would not even think of forwarding personal responses to those alerts, or of forwarding back and forth list discussions, to parties outside our own community.

The list is open subscription, so that while I know the e-mail addresses of all who subscribe, I don't really know who they all are. On two personal sharing lists that I own, I require prospective members to give me some information about themselves so that I know whether they in fact are people who the list is meant for. That approach is not acceptable on this list. So everyone is added as moderated. That gives moderators the opportunity to review all messages from new members before they go to the list, but it does not tell us who all the listmembers really are.

When I started this list, I wrote a statement of principles for the N.O. organizing process, which is sent to every new subscriber to the list. I didn't write a "netiquette" for the list itself, because I thought that the principles of etiquette for the list were implicit in the principles of "a process based on respect". In hindsight, it is clear that I was seriously mistaken in assuming that this would be clear to others as well.

So that is another task I need to assume, although I can't tell you when I will accomplish it. Once it's done, it will be distributed to all current listmembers and will be sent automatically to all future listmembers.

If some of these policies were put in a bottom banner it would reinforce them. But I'm not gung-ho about that approach. I don't like bottom banners. On Yahoo! I don't have any choice. I already have the address of the NO-LIST web page as a bottom banner, and then Yahoo! adds its own stuff below that. Some of you get advertising added under the body of the message and in above the bottom banner. I'm not enthused about adding anything more at the bottom of every message.

But since I've decided that a set of "list guidelines" is needed after all, as a temporary measure I'll add a note about list communications staying within the N.O. organizing community to the bottom banner. It won't get added until I figure out how to word it, and once added, it will stay there the next few weeks, and will be removed about the time the list guidelines are published.

But a note of emphasis .. some of the things I would put in list guidelines are what amount to strong suggestions .. such things as changing the subject header to reflect what you're really saying, and limiting the amount of material quoted in a reply. I have not regarded them as requirements on this list. This issue is another thing entirely. Keeping messages within our own community is a requirement if we are to function effectively as a community with the coherence and force to make significant accomplishments together.