On Tuesday 26 May 2009 01:00:57 Ximin Luo wrote: > Matthew Toseland wrote: > > On one prior occasion (this year), we have authorised a mailing list archive > > site to remove messages posted by somebody. I have now had another mail > > asking for us to remove somebody's name from two archives which we don't run > > - which generally requires him asking them and getting authorisation from us > > - and from our own archives. > > > > If this is to be a regular occurrence, we need to formulate some policy, and > > IMHO the best way to do this is to discuss it here. Does anyone have an > > opinion on this? I doubt very much that we have any legal obligation to > > remove somebody's posts, especially as at least one of the other archive > > sites will only remove messages with our say so, but I guess we could get > > legal advice on it... Any opinions on the principle? IMHO rewriting history > > to make yourself look good to employers is dubious, but at the same time we > > clearly don't want to pick fights and unnecessarily annoy people. > > but people repeatedly quote each other; i wouldn't've thought archive sites' > software would be sufficiently advanced enough to remove all traces of them > from their archive? > > IMO we should avoid removing entire messages, and encourage people to accept > removal of their name & other traceable stuff only. if they insist, it's > probably kind to remove everything, but I'm still surprised that this is > technically feasible.
Agreed. On our own archives, we can change the person's name to Anonymous Coward 1234. But on other people's archives, usually they will only accept deletion requests, authorised by the owner of the mailing list. Two further complications: - We are losing emu. This may mean losing our mailing list archives. In which case, deletion is the only option, because we rely on third party archives. Which really sucks. However, hopefully we will still be able to host basic mailing list archives. Ian is however pushing for us to outsource absolutely everything... - Removing from lurker (archives.freenetproject.org) is nontrivial, involving a 6 hour index rebuild during which time it will probably be offline. It is tempting to charge a fee - we could set it quite high and still be cheaper than suing us for making somebody less attractive to employers. But then if we missed a single message we could surely be sued for missing it. Although a disclaimer promising to put right any mistakes once notified and disclaiming all further liabilities might avoid that problem. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 835 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20090526/86105606/attachment.pgp>
