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

Their mentality

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

"I don't need to understand how it works, I JUST WANT IT DONE!!"

[wescobear.livejournal.com]

Has your magic wand gone missing?



No, not that "magic wand"!

[cpj.livejournal.com]

You've been in charge of the list for 18 years, so you're a guy that they obviously trust to manage the list. It's your job to explain to him that what he's asking for is undoable. Your president may have seen cases in the past where on his MS Exchange environment at work, people have been able to retract messages within a local environment.

You also have the skills and talent to say that while I cannot put the toothpaste back into the tube, to alleviate future issues we can set up list moderation, which would require approval for messages. Or if the problem can be corrected by user education, sent out a bi-monthly reminder telling users what is acceptable list behavior.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Dear sir,

Please learn teh internetz.

Yours,
bjarvis

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

This.

[furrbear.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should let M[rs] $PRESIDENT know you have forwarded his request to Superman as he is the only superhero who can reverse time and undo things of this sort.

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

Brian you are a saint. To make a bad pseudo-Latin expression "Illegitimi non-carborundum" i.e. don't let the bastards get you down.

[bigmacbear]

Something that has had to be dealt with since before e-mail was invented, I'm afraid:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
-- Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the poem "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam", 1859

[furmuslbulk.livejournal.com]

i guess if it's a yahoo group (or similar) u can delete the posting from the "sent messages" box. It'll dissapear from the history, but everyone who saw it, already saw it!

[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.