X-Message-Number: 595
From: Kevin Q. Brown
Subject: Re: Cryonics Email Directory
Date: 7 Jan 1992
In message #593 I wrote:
> . . . By Jan. 11 I will create a file 593.1, accessible by sending email
> to me with the subject line "CRYOMSG 593.1", with the names and email
> addresses of everyone who posted a message within the past six months
> (ie. messages 377 through 593). If anyone wants to be OFF this list
> despite posting a message, please let me know! . . .
I am not comfortable with this. Even though this directory can be generated
from publicly available information (since each message posted includes the
name and email address of the writer/sender in the header), distilling such
a directory from that corpus and making it publicly available somehow changes
the nature of the data. (A reverse telephone directory is not the same as
the regular telephone directories we all receive.) And, sorry to sound like
a spoilsport (especially considering that all the email I have received about
this so far has been positive), but I have other, mostly privacy-related,
concerns about my proposal, too.
(1) What exactly is this directory going to be used for and do its benefits
outweigh its risks? (Why are we creating it?)
(2) Since I am also the mailing list administrator, rather than someone who
only has postings from the last six months, there is the possibility
(depending on my algorithm for generating the directory) of mistakenly
including someone in this directory who should not be in it.
(3) The Jan. 11 date gives only a four or five day lead time for people
to respond. (What if someone is on vacation or a business trip?
What if message #593 gets lost in transit to some people?)
(4) How can misuse of the directory be discouraged?
(5) Finally, people may not remember if they posted a message in the range
377 - 593. They need some feedback concerning whether or not they are
scheduled to be in the proposed directory.
Nevertheless, creating a public cryonics email directory sounds like a
worthwhile project; let's not let it get dropped due to bureaucratic red tape!
(My own, self-inflicted bureaucratic red tape yet!)
In answer to Concern (1), the benefit of this directory should now be rather
apparent; it improves communication among people interested in cryonics by
helping to eliminate the main bottleneck (Kevin Q. Brown) through which all
messages must pass! The risks of repackaging into a directory the names and
email addresses that already have been posted seem, from the kinds of feedback
I have received, to be tolerably small to those people who have posted
messages to the cryonics mailing list. For example, every hundred messages I
have posted a one-liner summary of each of the last hundred messages, which
includes the last names of the contributors of those messages, and nobody has
complained to me about that. Also, even though I can post messages to the
cryonics mailing list anonymously, nobody has ever requested me to do that.
I take this as some evidence that for those who have posted messages to the
cryonics mailing list, privacy of their names and email addresses is not an
important issue. For people who have NOT posted messages to the cryonics
mailing list, I still will assume that that information is confidential.
For Concern (2), my first response was that the algorithm for generating
the directory should use ONLY the archives, not some combination of the
archives and the mailing list itself. But, what if someone's email address
changed since his/her last posting? What if the person later requested to
be dropped from the cryonics mailing list? I suggest that in these cases,
the person's entry be simply dropped from the automatically generated
directory, not corrected with the updated mailing list address, since the
new email address may be confidential.
For Concern (3), I suggest changing the Jan. 11 date to Jan. 21. That not
only gives people more time to say they do or do not want to be on the list,
but it also gives more time for feedback about the wisdom and terms of this
project. (Why Jan 21? Why not?)
For Concern (4) we need a clear statement of how the directory will be
presented (in order to influence how it is likely to be used). I can
suggest ways to NOT present the directory. It will NOT be presented as:
(1) a list of representatives of cryonics organizations (unless individuals
specifically request such a designation for their particular entry and
they are indeed representatives of those organizations) or even
(2) a list of people who believe that cryonic suspension is a good thing.
(Someone may have just been curious and posted a question.)
I suggest that the directory should be titled simply:
Directory of Recent Contributors to the Cryonics Mailing List
perhaps with a disclaimer plus a copyright notice saying it is OK to
redistribute electronically (until its expiration date six months after its
latest update) provided the disclaimer, copyright notice, and expiration date
are preserved intact. For some people, though, even with these safeguards
in place, inclusion in the directory may still be objectionable. For those
with moderate to high paranoia quotients, the inclusion of one's name and
email address in a publicly - accessible directory alongside known radical
and rabid cryonicists may seem too incriminating. For instance, consider
the following brief list:
Some People Born on earth
-------------------------
Adolf Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Kevin Brown
This list doesn't make me look very good does it?
To resolve Concern (5) I could send private email to everyone on the cryonics
mailing list by Jan. 11 (not Jan. 21) telling him or her either:
YES, you are scheduled to be listed in the directory
or
NO, you are not scheduled to be listed in the directory.
That would tell everyone his or her inclusion/exclusion status and give time
to send replies to me by Jan. 21.
. . .
I sure do have a talent for taking something simple and making it complicated,
don't I? (And programmers are supposed to strive to do just the opposite,
especially for the user interface!) One thing I have learned, though, is that
when something starts to get complicated, I probably am not doing it right.
So for those of you who have plugged through this message so far, through
all my hand-wringing, soul-searching, worry, and confusion, I have bad news
for you. It's all wrong! Automatically generating a publicly-accessible
directory of people's names and email addresses from the cryonics mailing
list archives is fundamentally a bad idea because it generates too many
complications.
I have an alternate proposal. To ensure that nobody gets on this directory
without wanting to be on it I will add entries ONLY BY REQUEST. Yes, that
means that people who post messages frequently will have to send one more
email message to me rather than letting me generate their entry automatically.
But that email message probably needs to be sent to me anyway, to give me the
fine-tuned wording, full complement of email addresses, and any other
important personal information for this directory. For people who have not
posted any messages to the cryonics mailing list, there will be no change;
you still have to send an email message to me to get listed in the directory.
I would appreciate receiving your replies by Jan. 21, but since I expect this
to be a "living document", with periodic updates, if you don't send email to
me now, you can always send email to me later. The working name of this
directory file will be, as stated earlier, "593.1". Since that's not a very
catchy name, though, I eventually will give it a better one.
Kevin Q. Brown
UUCP ...att!whscad1!kqb
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