On Fri, Dec 05, 1997 at 08:05:27AM +1300, Peter Mott wrote:
> >>PAB needs an environment where it can debate issues free from risk
> >>of a particular interpretation being placed on comments by casual
> >>readers (media and others) who only take a snap shot view.
>
> >perhaps, but it's not an attainable goal, since we already have examples of
> >people forwarding on portions of email exchanges and having them be
> >misconstrued.
>
> I think it is attainable. We reduce opportunity for people to do it
> accidently
My interest in opening the list is not based on the practical
impossibility of keeping it closed, but rather on the desirablity of
it being open.
> and we remove those who deliberately break the rules.
Since there are many (myself included) who would rather not have such
rules, I think it would be singularly difficult to enforce them, even
if they could be passed. Also, I think it would be extraordinarily
difficult to define rules that are reasonably enforcable, even in
principle. For example, many of the entities that are members of PAB
are large organizations. I can't see any reason why an organization
should not be able to forward PAB mail to their policy makers, or
indeed, all of their members; and I see no reasonable way that we can
demand that large organizations police their membership to not spread
the information.
> This helps everybody. Where is the encouragement for quality PAB folk
> to participate if they know somebody is lurking ready to copy extracts to
> the general public to suit their own ends?
In all honesty, I don't consider this a significant problem. There
have been a couple of cases where "leaks" happened. But they
disappeared in the noise, and have had no significant effect on
either the outcome of things or the behavior of the "leakees" :-).
I do have considerable sympathy for the concern of the introduction
of noise conversations on the list that might be cause by to rapid a
publication of the archives. I think a week delay would be about
right -- it would be pretty responsive to the issue of timely
publication of debate, but the delay would be long enough so that it
would be difficult to maintain a flame over it.
-- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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