[WikiEN-l] Mailman software (was Re: Who's moderated?)

[Armed Blowfish]

On 09/09/2007, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Armed Blowfish wrote:
>> Next option:
>> 'Would it be better to let individual users decide whether
> > or not they want their messages archived?  If a patch
> > were written to grant this capability, would it be used?'
> > (quoting self from earlier)
> Having a patchwork of archived and non-archived material would produce
> silly results.  If you opted out, just imagine how meaningless the
> flames that you have received would be without the original context. ;-)
>
> Ec

;-)

Messages can also get torn out of their original context when
they are read years after the fact by people using search
engines.

Let's take a trip into USENET history, shall we?  USENET was
originally highly transient - messages posted to newsgroups
disappeared from public servers in weeks.  Then enter the
public archive - searchable, people can still find out what
you said on the spur of the moment a decade ago.  Enter
Deja News, and the X-No-Archive header for those who
still wanted that old transience.  Enter Google, who bought
Deja News and changed the implementation - rather than
not archiving at all, archive for 6 days, and then the message
disappears.

This article may be of interest:
http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/technology/07NECO.html?_r=5&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin