[open-science] Publishing curated email lists

Thu Jun 23 18:07:23 UTC 2016

Stacy Konkiel <stacy at altmetric.com> writes:

> a conversation where some participants perhaps wouldn't want their
> responses shared verbatim... For some, it's one thing to have your
> emails buried in a listserv archive... it's another thing entirely for
> a company to reuse your emails, make them more discoverable...
> surfaces conversations that technically happen in public but take
> place with a certain expectation of "privacy through obscurity"

Sorry, but this kind of thinking is delusional. If anything making these
conversations more discoverable is a public service because it makes the
delusion more obvious, and given time, hopefully people will learn that
if you don't want your words reused, don't utter them in public and if
you don't want them attributed to you, use a pseudonym.

The Internet is a public place. It has always been so. Wishing it wasn't
won't change it. Indeed this is the root cause of the distress of many
who feel that their privacy has been violated on the Internet (yes,
there are privacy violations that also stem from other causes, but they
are vastly fewer). If you communicate with expectations that are contrary
to the nature of the medium that you have chosen, expect disappointment.

Best wishes,
-w