[open-science] Publishing curated email lists

Wed Jun 22 20:27:58 UTC 2016

On 21 June 2016 at 17:28, Stacy Konkiel <stacy at altmetric.com> wrote:

> One thing I would suggest is having an opt-out mechanism available for
> those who don't want their email(s) shared publicly.
>
> It may seem counter-intuitive--I think we all know that most email lists
> are hardly private--but I also think that for many there's an unspoken
> expectation of "this will stay on this list".

I understand the intention here to offer a kind of privacy, but I'd worry
about offering some kind of 'opt out' on a public list (both publicly
archived and open to anyone to subscribe):

1. There's a risk that the existence of an opt out gives people the idea
that their posts are private if they opt out of publication, when in fact
they're still completely public, just maybe not so obvious.
2. It creates an ambiguous situation around the messages of people who
opted out. It's public, but you can't... make it too public? What if
someone made a nicer interface to the mailman archives that invited more
attention? What if a journalist wanted to quote messages from a mailing
list? What would the opt out actually mean?
3. How can you sensibly archive conversations where a key participant has
opted out, especially if people quote them in replies? Does anyone involved
in a conversation effectively have veto power to prevent re-archiving that
conversation?

Thomas
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