Unclear on the Concept

[bjarvis]

I've been maintaining the gay & lesbian chorus mailing list on the Internet for a little over 18 years now. (Wow, I'm getting old.)

This morning, one of the subscribers sent a message to the list. The list isn't moderated so it was relayed faithfully per the list settings. The message itself wasn't offensive in any fashion and seemed too be a perfectly innocent & valid request for information.

Within an hour, I received an email from the president of that chorus stating that the prior message from one of his own members was "an unauthorized posting using the [edited] Chorus name." He asked formally that I remove the message and let him know when it is completed.

Where do I begin with the list of issues in that request?

1. If the original email was unauthorized, how can I tell if the following removal request is authorized and not a forgery of some form?
   
2. Um, Mr chorus president, how would you feel about me reaching into your mailbox to delete messages addressed to you which other people arbitrarily determined weren't suitable for your viewing? You're asking me to try that on others... are you willing to have that done to you?
   
3. Such a request is banking pretty heavily on my honesty and skills. Assume I had some technological fairy dust to do what you ask: you'd better hope I delete the correct message and don't decide to go spelunking through the rest of your mailbox, deleting any additional messages which strike my fancy.
   
4. Ultimately, there is no magical way to reach into someone's private mailboxes to arbitrarily delete message. If it were possible, someone could make a pretty penny running an after-the-delivery spam removal service... anyone seen such lately? And imagine the nightmares which would result from malware being able to delete valid messages at will!
   
5. Even if there was a mechanism for me to retract a previously-delivered email message, it's guaranteed to be less-than-successful. Mailboxes rarely stay in one designated place: larger Internet service providers may move the box transparently among several servers, individual customers may download their messages to their private machine & log off, some people will store copies of messages in private archives, their iPhones, their Blackberries, etc.. The odds of nailing even a significant fraction of these devices is pretty poor.
   

Some people just don't really understand the implications of what they ask.

Comments

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

A few points of clarification: He's not my president actually, he's the president of some chorus in the midwest, a guy I've never met and probably never will. The list involved isn't his chorus list but a list I've been running for members of any lgbt anywhere on the planet. As far as I know, the list has been around longer than his chorus.

In this instance, I've sent the prez an email explaining that all I can do is remove the original message from the archives and that if he as chorus president is upset that chorus members use the chorus name in any conversation or correspondence without his approval, that's an internal communication issue for his chorus, not my international email list.

As for acceptable list behavior, the original email was utterly innocuous and within the normal use of the mailing list. I suspect some sort of internal chorus politics in play. If the prez responds, perhaps we'll know more.

The one thing I definitely will not do is set up list moderation. If the list membership needs that kind of babysitting after all these years, the list will have outlived its usefulness and will require killing.