[Noisebridge-discuss] list archives, redaction, search engines, and privacy

[Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson]

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On Apr 22, 2009, at 7:48 AM, Andy Isaacson wrote:

> At the request of one of our members (who wants to keep their first 
> +last
> name from being associated with Noisebridge, but the full name was
> posted to the board list) I've added a robots.txt to www.noisebridge.net
> that should block /pipermail/board/ from being indexed by google and
> other reasonable web indexers.
>
> The block is specific to the board archive, and should not affect the
> -discuss list.
>
> Depending on how that works out, we may end up deciding to redact the
> archives more explicitly.
>
> I'd personally prefer not to edit the archives, but I fully understand
> and support individuals having control over their deets and achieving
> their own preferred degree of information disclosure.  So, there are
> a few options under consideration:
>
> 0. do nothing
> 1. use robots.txt to request non-indexing of /pipermail/board/
> 1.5. use robots.txt to request non-indexing of the specific messages
> 2. edit the archive ("s/John Doe/John #########/g")
> 3. remove the offending messages from the archive (replacing it with
> "removed at the request of a member")
> 4. remove the offending messages without leaving a notice
> 5. make the archives require a login (possibly a trivial login just to
> defeat indexing).
>
> currently we're at 1.0; IMO 1.5 and 3. are the relevant alternatives.
> (Somehow, to me, 3. seems less Newspeak than 2., but perhaps that's  
> just
> me.)
>

I would have less issues with 2 than with 3, personally. In 3, the  
entire contents of one part of the discussion gets removed, with a  
unreadably log as a result; whereas with 2, on specific request from  
John Doe, the identifiability of John Doe per se gets removed.

On the other hand, I am currently a resting member (or whatever the  
term ended up being), so it's not as if I'm going to push very hard  
for or against anything here.

Non-pseudonymously yours,
Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson, Dr.rer.nat
Postdoctoral researcher
mik at math.stanford.edu






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