[HPFGU-Feedback] Re: ADMIN: Possible Changes to the Main List Settings

[Shaun Hately]

On 22 Jan 2004 at 0:58, Przemyslaw Plaskowicki wrote:

> Shaun Hately wrote:
> Nevertheless, it never have been a concern for me. My full name gets 
> over 400 hits on Google Web and 500 hits on Google Groups, all (or 
> almost all) are my posts to various fora. I just don't care, and I guess 
> some people on HP4GU don't care either.

Some people almost certainly don't care - but some people do - and 
some may have very real concerns. Personally speaking, there are 
things I have said on HPFGU that I would *prefer* that children I 
work with don't see. Mainly because they go into personal issues 
about my own childhood that they don't need to know about in any 
more detail than I have already told them. There's nothing there 
that would be a disaster for me if they found out - but there is 
stuff that would make me uncomfortable.

Other people may have even greater concerns - I know of cases where 
people's posts to various internet newsgroups (which are generally 
publically archived) have cost them jobs, and have even put the 
custody of their children at risk. In some cases, they should have 
been more careful and the posts raised real concerns. In other 
cases, the problems have occurred because innocent posts were taken 
seriously out of context.

When I join any internet forum (and I've been on such forums now 
for... well, 14 years or so) I check its accessibility, and I do 
sometimes choose to post certain things to some groups and nother 
others based on that accessibility. In the case of HPFGU, if the 
list had had public archives at the time I made certain posts, I 
would not have made those posts because I don't want them coming up 
in google searches.

Now, I'm still on the list - so I will know about any change - and 
I can go back through the archives and delete those posts now if I 
want to. So I'm not overly concerned for *myself* whether or not 
the list archives are open.

What really concerns me is those people who have been on HPFGU in 
the past and who no longer are on the list. Who posted to a list 
that had closed archives (and may have only had 1000 or members at 
the time they joined it) - and who will have no way of knowing that 
their messages have suddenly become much more publically 
accessible, until one of them is put in front of them by their 
manager, or their spouse, or their child, or a lawyer. Because they 
won't know this change has happened, they cannot protect against 
it.

There's another issue that I think the admins need to consider - 
that of legal liability. I discussed this briefly with a lawyer at 
work - it's complex because we're dealing with so many potential 
jurisdictions here - but if a person sent a message to 'closed 
archives' HPFGU two years ago, and after the archives were opened - 
without their knowledge, such a message was used against them in 
some way, this lawyer could not rule out the possibility that that 
person would have a legal case against the HPFGU admins. He felt 
that such a case would *probably* be unlikely to succeed - but 
there were circumstances in which it might.

When you change the rules, you start to run risks like that - 
especially in a case where there is no practical way of letting 
many people know about the change.

Seriously - if HPFGU admins do decide to open the archives, I think 
it would be very wise of them to announce that change fairly widely 
in other places former members are likely to hang around in.

My preference is that the archives not be opened - but if they are, 
I think you'd be well advised to make sure you've made all 
reasonable efforts to try and ensure that anyone with messages in 
those archives is informed of the change.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at ... | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia