[Town Meeting] ADMIN: Should the TM listserve archives be public?

[David Coletta]

Dear TM listserve member,

When you were invited to join this listserve, the invitation said that 
the listserve archives would not be public.  This was my idea, 
motivated by concern for members' privacy.  Since then, however, many 
TMMs have told me that they feel that the needs for transparency and 
public access to information outweigh the privacy concerns.

Therefore, I plan to open up the archives to public access.  This will 
mean that anyone can visit the archives over the web and read what has 
been posted on the TM listserve.  However, the archives will *not* be 
indexed by Google, so no archived postings will appear in any Google 
search results.  Also, email addresses will not be displayed, so there 
will be no danger of spam.

If you are interested in seeing what the archives look like, please 
visit them at:
  http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/private/townmeeting/
Since they are still private for now, you will need the password that 
was emailed to you in the "Welcome to the townmeeting mailing list" 
message you received when you joined the listserve.

So far I have heard no serious reservations from anyone about making 
the archives public, and I don't expect there to be many.  However, if 
you do have any reservations about it, please reply *privately* to this 
message.  In particular, I would like to hear if public archives would 
make you less likely to post, or if they would compel you to cancel 
your subscription to the listserve.

If you are comfortable with the archives being public, then there is no 
need to reply.  I'm only looking to hear from people with reservations 
or questions.

Thank you,
David Coletta
TM Listserve Administrator