On Jul 2, 2009, at 6:10 AM, Chauncey Wilson wrote:
> It would be useful to be able to choose whether you wanted something
> archived or not. I'm on another group where we don't archive any of
> the conversations (people can of course, save copies) to encourage
> more freedom of speech and less concern over the issues we've been
> discussing. Of course, some people disagree with the no-archive
> policy, but overall, it seems to work and the policy is clearly
> spelled out when you join. That approach is more like a conversation
> where you are not being recorded the entire time.
It's a falsity that the group that doesn't archive is somehow more
free to have conversations that this group, which does archive.
As a member of that group, you never know who else is on the list. You
don't know who is saving messages or who might forward them to someone
else. (The group has a policy that you not supposed to forward, but
there's no way to enforce it.)
So, even in a group which doesn't archive, you can't assure the sender
that a client/colleague/manager or someone else won't see the email.
In my opinion, it would be detrimental to the long-term social value
of this group to have a choice of archiving. If you gave the choice on
individual messages, then threads would be sporadic (not to mention
the problem of quoting unarchived messages in archived responses). If
you gave the choice on entire threads, then important information
would be missing, making the value of the archives unreliable.
The reality is that once you press the SEND button in any email, that
message is then broadcast to hundreds of computers, logged, and
archived on systems you don't even know exist. (For Sarbanes-Oxley
compliance, many US corporations now log every incoming and outgoing
message.)
So, if you don't want someone to see your thoughts, don't put them in
an email. Period.
My $0.02.
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e:
jspool@... p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog:
http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: @jmspool
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