From: J C Lawrence <claw(_at_)kanga(_dot_)nu>
When I sign up to any source of bulk mail, I only sign up for that
particular stream of mail from that particular source. I do not sign
up for anything else, no matter what any third party might think, even
if that third party provides content that is published in the list.
While that may be what you intend to do, that is not apparent from your
actions, and even more so, that is not implied by the information you
reveal should you post to that list. This is simple information theory
stuff.
"Information theory stuff" is stuff and nonsense in this context. If
you want to talk about Shannon's work and so forth, we could, but such
talk would have nothing to do with the charter of this mailing list
or this digression.
In the general case when you post to the forum you reveal yourself,
willy nilly, to all the members of that forum at that time, and (very
likely) everybody who may every find or discover that forum for the rest
of time (archives and associative bleed being what they are). Those are
the explicit audiences to whom you've provided your contact data. If
that doesn't describe what you want to do, then DON'T DO THAT.
Attempting to retroactively assign riders or etiquette contracts
regarding your provided data is unlikely to work.
...
That position is indistinguishable from spammers who claim that
publishing an address is tantamount to soliciting anything they care
to send you, until you opt-out, and that any future publication of
your contact information is a new request to be spammed back to the
19th Century. Please note that I am not saying you are a spammer,
but only that those words express perfectly the position of spammers
that they have the right to spam you if you don't hide your address.
I think subscribing or contributing to a mailing list amounts to
nothing more than subscribing or contributing to a mailing list.
In the absense of explicit agreement to the contrary, subscribing
to a mailing list does not solicit any mail from anyone except from
that mailing list.
It is reasonable for a stranger to assume that you at least tolerate
non-bulk, polite, private messages on any topic that the sender
reasonably believes interests you. That the sender infers your interest
from a web page, netnews article, mailing list submission, business
card, roadside sign, or mental telepathy is irrelevant. Submitting
something to a mailing list does not grant anyone any right to send
you mail that they would not already have without your submission.
However, that permission can be assumed to extend only to non-bulk,
polite message and only in the absense of knowledge to the contrary.
That permission to send mail to you be withdrawn at any time with no
more notice than an SMTP status message or an email message.
Note: Such an approach makes it difficult to fork a thread off-list.
There are cases where the only discussions that are possible are public
because there is insufficient mutual regard for private discussions.
Despite such problems, public discussions can be fruitful.
Public statements do not obligate you to private discussions with anyone.
To put it another way, if you think your response to someone's public
remark is inapprorpriate for the public forum, then you should consider
the possibility that you shouldn't make it in private.
In yet other words, are you really advocating the notion that I must
receive bulk noise about keys because I've subscribed to this mailing
list? If so, what about urgent messages about escrow accounts in Nigeria?
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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