You guys sure take your time, but thank you for doing the right thing eventually!
One question: you said you won't agree to the "mass-deletion of content", does that mean you are deleting some content, just not a large amount? The arguments you make apply to small amounts of content just add much as they do large amounts. On Aug 15, 2012 9:25 PM, "James Forrester" <jdforres...@gmail.com> wrote: > All, > > Over the past few months a number of individuals have asked for some, > many, or all e-mails they have written to be removed from the > archives. In general, our answer has been a holding 'no', but the > mailing list's archives were nevertheless temporarily hidden from > view. This was unsatisfactory in a number of ways, and we regret our > failure to communicate to the list what was happening. On behalf of > all of the UK Wikimedia mailing list's administrators, I would like to > apologise, and explain. > > As a public mailing list, there is no reasonable expectation of > privacy on WikimediaUK-l or any other public Wikimedia-hosted list. > Anyone who thinks otherwise is misleading themselves and those to whom > they communicate these views. As has been noted before, the act of > deletion is very much "blowing up the stable after the horse has > bolted": deleting e-mails from the WMF-hosted archives will at best > flag them to certain individuals as containing information that is > worth ferreting out from the many other archives that are not under > our control in any way. > > Indeed, deleting e-mails is problematic in a number of ways: > > * it hides the institutional knowledge that the mailing list's archives > contain; > * it gives an utterly false sense of security to people concerned > about their privacy; > * it turns an open forum into one where users are unsure about what to > expect in terms of repeatability; and > * it is difficult and resource-expensive to achieve, and risks > breaking the mailing list server for all of the hundreds of WMF-hosted > lists. > > We will not agree to keeping the lists pseudo-private, or to the > mass-deletion of content. We understand that this may concern some > users, but we cannot wave a magic wand and fix what is broken. If some > users find that this means that they are unable or unwilling to > continue to contribute to this list, we are saddened, but would note > that similar (and often far stronger) privacy issues are involved in > other forms of online engagement, such as visiting most commercial > websites, using instant messaging or editing Wikipedia. > > The sign-up page for this mailing list[0] is not as clear as it could > be as to the general nature of a mailing list, hailing as it does from > the days when this was expected prior knowledge of anyone stumbling > over the page. We will adjust it to be more explicit about the instant > public dissemination and (in practical terms) irrevocable, > distributed, permanent public archiving of all messages sent to a > public list; this e-mail is also part of that user education work. > > For the WikimediaUK-l volunteer mailing list admins, > > James F. > > [0] - https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > -- > James D. Forrester > jdforres...@gmail.com > [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal > capacity) > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > wikimediau...@wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org >
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
