On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>
> Sigh. But yes, that's basically true. In Ray Bradbury's books,
> nobody locked a front door. Now, nobody talks to their neighbors.
(snip)
> You have to do one of a few things:
>
> Not care and/or not try. And in some cases, that might be
> appropriate or acceptable. That's just Not Me.
>
> Restrict usage. But this creates other conflicts. And frankly,
> I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the concept of the
> mailing list as armed refugee camp. I LIKE talking to my
> neighbors. But to date, it's been what we had available.
I know usenet groups are now sometimes auto-restricted by
provider, and doubtless in other ways -- and at times "leak" out
anyway. (bburg.general, which is supposed to be available only
in the vicinity of Blacksburg, VA, is on Verizon.net's list of All
Groups, and used to be (probably still is) on Earthlink's.)
What about real lists? Are auto-restrictions common? Do
they mostly work off the would-be subscriber's address, or ....?
> Do Something Else. What we're bandying around at work is to basically "fix
> the archives", only in this case, we're sort of using fix in the "friendly
> veterinarian way". Rather than restrict usage of the archives, restrict what
> comes out of it,
i.e., do a vasectomy instead of a castration? <grin> Only
you're adding a filter, really, rather than removing or
disconnecting anything -- IF I understand you ....
> by dynamically cloaking the sensitive content as it leaves the
> system. Then, the only restriction we need to make is "you can't
> subscribe to the list and create your own PUBLIC archive". Which
> still doesn't solve gmane's "problem". So we're actually talking
> about whether it makes sense to create a "pre cloaked" feed of
> the lists, so anyone who wants to make an archive can subscribe
> to THAT archive, knowing it's "safe" as we define safe. In other
> words, if you use that feed, we're saying you'll never get in
> trouble with us, because we took responsibility for cleaning it
> up before it left the site.
>
> And that, I think, is where this needs to move. Back to
> technology, instead of permissions. And that means making sure
> that the data that leaves your site is in a form you can lose
> control over without getting stressed over it.
Supposing such a form exists. There is a poem somewhere
called The Omelette of A MacLeish -- which ends with MacL doomed to
go on doctoring his omelette forever ....
> Barry, JC and some others have been doing some noodling at
> integrating TMDA (an address obscuring and whitelisting tool)
> into Mailman. The idea being that even addresses coming from the
> server are obscured (except for russ') and replies to a user go
> through the list server and the whitelist. That basically puts
> the server in charge of ALL interactions between list users,
> although users can choose to drop out of the system, obviously.
> But it means that you no longer have to try to control content
> after it leaves the server. It's safe.
You're providing a guarded stage, or one behind a
polycarbonate shield : those who wish can hold their dialog for
anyone interested to hear, and yet be safe from rotten eggs -- and
oil of vitriol. A good thing if do-able.
> That has it's own challenges, but at least it opens up lists into
> more of a "welcome, boys!" place again, instead of the
> increasingly paranoid, closed circles I think we're being forced
> into....
CP Snow in his late years bemoaned the fact that all of the
"first world" even then was withdrawing into enclaves, as he called
them -- fenced a/o guarded enclaves. I have a hunch population
density is relevant : physical in the case of the gated
communities, electronic online.
Incidentally, there's also another form of electronic
enclave, the private list. My favorite is one, and Forbes magazine
had an article maybe three years ago about the proliferation of
such.
> > So I see that I need a perception adjustment... I'm still stuck
> > in the past on some of these policy matters and haven't fully
> > internalized the realities and necessities of the way things
> > are now.
>
> As we all are. Most of this is stuff that had no real visibility
> two years ago. Or even a year ago. It wasn't too long ago folks
> thought I was crazy for password protecting email archives (some
> probably still think so...)
>
> But, you know? I remember when we thought nothing of putting home
> addresses and phone numbers in messages.
A friend who teaches Old Testament at a local college has
all that in her .sig -- and refuses to consider suggestions that
she remove it, even now ....
> It's just more of the exploration into how to be available and in
> contact, but still be able to manage your privacy. I expect we'll
> be working that issue for years to come. It's funny, though, how
> a little privacy well placed makes it a lot easier to be public
> and accessible. Seems counter-intuitive, but it looks to be true.
Again, my hunch is that it's a function of population
density.
--
Beartooth the Stubborn <karhunhammas (at) lserv.com>, double retiree,
linux hatchling w/ RH 7.2; ssh'd (DSL) to pine 4.43 on ISP's SunOS 5.8;
Opera 6.02, Pan 0.11.2, Galeon 1.2.5, & Mozilla 1.0
Neo-Redneck, Weird by Nature -- and with Gusto!
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