Hi Lois, et al I've refrained from engaging in this debate for several reasons, beginning with simply wanting to see how it runs without my interference. But I can't resist commenting on the following - On 5/11/09 10:43 PM, "Lois Ann Scheidt" <lscheidt@umail.iu.edu> wrote:

On some level it seems odd to me that an organization for people who should be at least minimally technically savvy is taking a somewhat extreme paternalistic stance to protect us from ourselves.

I take your point, and would agree with you if there were my perception of what has happened - but this is simply not my sense of the concern. I don't worry about 99.99% of list members, such as you, who of course are perfectly competent; I also don't worry about 99.99% of the list who - as this dialogue manifests - are an understanding and forgiving community when the occasional personal post gets accidentally sent to the entire list. Within that population, were something egregiously awful to inadvertently make its way to the list, I'm absolutely confident that we could count on our colleagues to exhibit discretion, delete the problematic post, and more or less forget about it. My worry is about the .01% (including an infamous example from a few years ago) who might use such an episode as the occasion to attempt to inflict real damage on the organization when discovering that, contrary to Jeremy's assurances, we are unable to persuade / bribe Dreamhost into deleting problematic postings. (Yes, it would be a good idea to explore alternative hostings - but this is not anything that is going to happen anytime soon. Please remember that your Executive Committee, including our systems officers, are volunteers, whose work for AoIR receives no compensation either from AoIR or from their home institutions, e.g., in the form of release time. I don't mean this to sound huffy or snarky, but we pretty well have our hands full as it is. To be sure, if the membership want to add such exploration to our agenda, we can do that - but it will have to wait until other current matters and responsibilities are discharged. Realistically, this should be an agenda item for the new Executive Committee that will be constituted in October, following this summer's/winter's elections - more on that soon.) To be sure, to paraphrase Jeremy, we could get a lawyer. But that's precisely the problem we're trying to avoid. That is, part of the concern some of us have on the Executive Committee is that going down that particular path could become extremely expensive extremely quickly, and thereby severely undermine what we're otherwise able to do as an organization.

From within this framework, I don't see this as a paternalistic stance to protect 99.99% of our list members from themselves. I see this as anticipating a possible problem, one that, worst-case, could be quite serious indeed - and then trying to prevent such a problem if at all possible.

Yes, this precise scenario has not happened yet. Perhaps the chances of it happening are vanishingly small. This is something we're trying to explore further, precisely in order to determine how genuinely possible the worst-case scenario is. Please give us some time to work through all of that. But we didn't just dream this up in order to give ourselves additional work (o.k., that was snarky - sorry!). A couple of episodes within recent memory and experience (i.e., very unhappy list members who had every good reason in the world to want to have a posting removed, which we were unable to do - and threatened suit from another list member over a similar issue), while separate, have nonetheless suggested to at least a couple of us on the EC that this is a possibility we should explore. And, should it turn out to be a realistic possibility - one that could, worst-case, inflict serious damage on the organization - we are obviously charged with and responsible for doing our best to forestall and prevent such damage. Again, I don't see that as paternalism - I regret if it has come across that way. In the meantime, I would then ask the membership to further consider: how large/small of a possibility does this sort of scenario have to be to justify the change in setting? I have in mind here a version of Pascal's wager - part of which argues that the more significant the consequences of a particular possibility may be, the smaller that possibility will be before we take pre-emptive action. For example, I generally take an umbrella and drive a car (instead of bicycling) if the chance of rain is greater than 30%. If I end up getting wet, it's unpleasant, but not fatal. By contrast, the chances of my getting killed while driving are much, much smaller - as they must be, in order for me to, in effect, bet that I won't die if I drive to work. Yes, the chances of such a worst-case scenario are quite small - perhaps vanishingly small. But the consequences could be severe. Between these two: the chances of my being killed or seriously hurt if involved in a driving accident while not wearing a seatbelt are somewhat higher, though still quite small. But the difference is enough to persuade me to wear the seatbelt, despite the minor inconvenience of doing so. The analogy I'm trying to offer, then, is that the changed setting is something like wearing a seatbelt while driving. Of course, we cannot eliminate all risks. But given the significantly awful consequences that might follow from certain events, however improbable, it seems prudent to do what we can to avoid those consequences, even if at the cost of some inconvenience. So, again, how should we bet? Should we remain with the previous setting, and take our chances, because we're betting that the likelihood of such a worst-case scenario is so low, and the deficits of changing the setting - putting on the seatbelt - offset our improving our chances of avoiding potentially awful consequences, or do we decide that it's better to avoid the greater risk in favor of a somewhat smaller one (i.e., by changing the setting - putting on the seatbelt), because the consequences could be egregious, even if the possibility of those consequences coming to pass may be very small? Now that I've jumped in with both feet - just to be clear: I don't have a dog in this fight (another reason I've not responded to some of the postings). Especially because this is a technically-savvy group of scholars and researchers who desire and enjoy communicating with one another, I'm just not convinced (yet) that a change in setting will in fact result in a severe downturn of communication on the list. But I personally do not care which way we decide to go. I - and the EC - are simply trying to make sure that we are doing what we can to be aware of possible problems, especially as these are suggested to us by experience, and then pursue possible solutions. Thanks again to all for the multiple and most interesting comments, arguments, observations, and data! cordially, - c.

Hi, Charles and co. -- Let me see if I get this straight. The Exec is worried about the 1-in-10,000 chance (Charles' 0.01% figure) that someone will take umbrage at a posting in the list's archive, become litigious, attempt to sue AoIR, and wind up doing the organization great damage. And to meet this hypothetical threat, the Exec has decided ... to change the listserv settings so that keeping a conversation going onlist requires a small amount of extra effort. Assuming that the hypothetical threat is grave enough to bother with (I'm not so sure I buy that assumption, but let's roll with it for a moment), the solution offered is ... well ... not much of one. Partially because, as Charles admits, the fear here is already centered on an unlikely and irrational course of action by an unusually aggressive (and still imaginary) person. But mostly because what's at the core of the threat in question -- i.e., legal action (however irrational) against AoIR in response to something in the listserv's archives -- isn't actually addressed very well by changing the listserv's technical settings. If we're going to protect ourselves against imaginary lawsuits, misdirected private messages should be the least of our worries. What about authors who claim that unfavorable onlist comments about their work are defamatory? Businesses who claim that messages posted using their employees' work email accounts are the intellectual property of the businesses in question, and that AoIR doesn't have the legal right to archive them without formal permission? Media organizations who claim that onlist discussions of filesharing networks somehow "aid and abet" copyright infringement? Etc. To be sure, most of those sound (at least to my non-lawyerly ears) like frivolous suits that would probably get laughed out of any self-respecting court of law ... but the same could be said for the legal action the Exec seems to be worried about anyway. And none of those imaginary lawsuits revolve around a distinction between private and public messages. Put another way, if the Exec is going to get all bent out of shape because someone might sue AoIR for something that happens on the listserv, then changing the "reply-to:" field for the listserv is a pretty lame solution to that problem. Disable the archives completely. Make the list fully moderated (presumably by hyper-sensitive attorneys well versed in international law). I'm NOT convinced that the threat involved is serious or grave enough to merit extra precautions of any sort ... but if we're going to treat that threat as if it really were that serious, then we should follow through with appropriate rigor. Otherwise, we're just engaging in the listserv equivalent of the sort of "security theatre" that's become the norm at airports: take off your shoes, show us your shampoo -- and we'll all pretend that this is best way to keep planes from being hijacked. cheers gil Charles Ess wrote:

My worry is about the .01% (including an infamous example from a few years ago) who might use such an episode as the occasion to attempt to inflict real damage on the organization when discovering that, contrary to Jeremy's assurances, we are unable to persuade / bribe Dreamhost into deleting problematic postings.