On 15-Dec-10 3:31 PM, Shoba Narayan wrote: > But I want to find out if anyone else on this list shares my views. > When I was invited into Silk by Dr. Shiv Sastry maybe two years ago, I > didn't realize that all its archives were in the open domain.
The decision to make silk a publicly archived list was very early on in its life: 01 Feb 1998 to be exact [1]. There are many reasons in my mind for this: list members might have more. But as I mentioned briefly yesterday, *any* online group has a large silent majority who do influence, in some sense, the postings of the vocal few. This is the 'performance art' aspect of mailing list discussions. Also, I believe that archives are both conversation enabler as well as historical record. Start with the kind of footnoted posts I like to do, in the belief that it enriches the post if you add historical context. > Now that I know this, I might hibernate into a lurker. > > It is one thing to say crazy/funny stuff to a group of people, albeit a > large and largely unknown one, but within a "closed" setting, but it is > quite another to say something for anyone to see. It is probably a question of register. One of the more insightful ruminations on this is by list.lurker (!) Danny O'Brien [2] where he introduces the term 'private register'. I strongly encourage you to read the post a few times, but I will quote liberally from it below: <q> In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn't. You can have a private gathering, but it isn't necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones. </q> the issue, then? <q> On the net, you have public, or you have secrets. The private intermediate sphere, with its careful buffering. is shattered. E-mails are forwarded verbatim. IRC transcripts, with throwaway comments, are preserved forever. You talk to your friends online, you talk to the world. This is why, incidentally, why people hate blogs so much. My God, people say, how can Livejournallers be so self-obsessed? Oh, Christ, is Xeni talking about LA art again? Why won't they all shut up? The answer why they won't shut up is - they're not talking to you. They're talking in the private register of blogs, that confidential style between secret-and-public. And you found them via Google. They're having a bad day. They're writing for friends who are interested in their hobbies and their life. Meanwhile, you're standing fifty yards away with a sneer, a telephoto lens and a directional microphone. Who's obsessed now? </q> And now we come to what I think is the real meat of this excellent piece: <q> I think the private register will regain a foothold - as I believe it has with blogs. We'll learn a kind of tolerance for the private conversation that is not aimed at us, and that overreacting to that tone will be a sign of social naivete. </q> > Since Udhay said that he "feels strongly" about this, let me start by > stating that I too feel very strongly about this group's privacy settings I am still a little unclear as to why. If it is because you are concerned about your postings being quoted out of context, maybe one solution is to have a nom de list, as Ashok suggested. Thoughts? Udhay [1] http://www.netropolis.in/silklist/msg00087.html [2] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/9208 -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
