Well, I think that Edward has given an apt demonstration of the problems that we're facing here.

I'll say that I was the one that made the archives for this list restricted to subscribers only. I took this course of action because the list archives were being data mined with the aim of harassing and invading the privacy of its subscribers via the posts that they had made. Restricting the list to subscribers appeared to provide a good way of removing the list archives from search engines, and hence making it more difficult to data-mine the archives efficiently. It also provided a reasonable alternative to simply deleting the archives, which was being mooted at the time. I didn't particularly want to make the change (I'm always going to prefer things being as open and transparent as possible), but it seemed to be the only reasonable course of action possible given the situation at the time.

However, this approach of 'security by obscurity' has now been shown to be ineffective due to the list being publicly archived by other means, as well as this being pointed out on-list.. The approach of moderating who subscribes to this list is not a good one to take since that's effectively exclusion rather than obscuration.

Given the weight of opinion in favour of making the archives publicly visible again, and the lack of a rationale for not doing so, I'll make the archives publicly visible again. But before that happens, I think that there needs to be an option to redact past posts. So:

If you have posted something to this list that you would like to be redacted from the archives, for the sake of privacy or potential harassment, then please let me know within the next 3 days. I'll then confidentially send a request to the server administrators to get those posts removed from the archive. After they've been removed, then we'll open up the archives again. If you let me know outside of those three days, then I'll request their removal, but they may not be removed before the archive is made public.

Three notes. 1) I'll only request the removal of emails sent by those asking for them to be removed, unless there are *very* good reasons for their removal. 2) This only means that they will be removed from the archive hosted at lists.wikimedia.org - I'm not aware of any available ability to request the removal of posts from archives hosted by those apart from the WMF. 3) As a result of (2), this option depends on the ethical behaviour of those reading the list archives, which obviously cannot be guaranteed.

Thanks,
Mike
P.S. for those that the difference matters to: please note that my actions were made as a community member, not as a trustee of WMUK. No decision was made by the WMUK board on this issue. (And why, exactly, does this difference matter? We're all Wikimedians here.)
P.P.S. sorry, I'm only human, I can't resist ending on a cheap shot. So, Edward: "Nor is your indifference to the way that individuals are insulted in public with libellous and false and outrageous claims very helpful either. Persuading someone to remove these vile and insulting messages would be much more helpful." Yes please, I'd really like those insults and claims to be removed from Wikipedia Review, please.
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