I don't think he's asking whether or not people can post their OWN e-mail addresses on their OWN user pages (something which no one would oppose -- you do so at your own risk, of course); the question is whether Wikipedia articles should have the e-mail addresses of their SUBJECTS posted.
Here's my take on it: Should they contain their post-office addresses too? Probably not, even if it is just a P.O. Box or some other address which is not a physical location of where they live. Of course, generic addresses (so-and-so lives in Washington, D.C.; so-and-so works in the Chamber of Commerce) are fine, but I don't think specific addresses are a good idea. Whatever the privacy issues, they are simply not fodder for an encyclopedia article.
(I think in the case of political figures the privacy issues are minor, but I think it is also a bad habit to start. People *do* get touchy about addresses, even if they are technically in the public domain, like yellow and white pages.)
I think it is better to link to their homepage on the web -- if they want people writing to them by e-mail or any other methods, they will post that information themselves. People who want that sort of information will be able to find it without Wikipedia's help. If they can't find it without Wikipedia's help, it probably isn't something that belongs on Wikipedia in the first place (that is, it probably isn't meant to be accessible).
FF
On 1/31/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/31/06, Tom Steinberg tom@tomsteinberg.co.uk wrote:
Is it permissable to put email addresses on wikipedia, if they're already public?
Of course it is! How on earth are people to be able to communicate with one another if their email addresses are hidden?
I profess profound distaste for the practice of concealing, mangling, and distorting email addresses. I myself have had an email address on my userpage for well over a year and can count the amount of spam that has gotten though on the fingers of one hand, so there's no excuse. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l