[Mailman-Developers] thinking out loud...

[Fil]

> FWLIW I don't believe in rewriting history.  For that reason and others
> related to it I don't remove messages from archives, or do anything more
> with X-No-Archive other than laughing while I ignore it.

Why not. I was talking about technical issues: is it efficient to generate
the pages "on the fly"? are plain-html archives the right answer or just a
legacy of majordomo? ... but if, by "rewriting history", you mean that
someone would do it if she can overwrite files on her computer, history must
be at a high risk today - even HyperArch can rewrite the past ;)

As for cultural context, in France we have a law about "computers and
freedom" (better termed "electronic privacy" now, but that law was passed in
the 1980's, after Chirac, then 1st minister, had decided to set up a big
centralized database containing fiscal records and such... the big database
was called SAFARI, funny hey?) Under this privacy law, people have a right
to know which files contain data about them, see what data there is, correct
the information, and even request to be removed (of course there are many
exceptions, for obvious reasons, but publicly accessible email archives
certainly fall under this law).

Is the law working? Maybe, in terms of percentage of people "caught by the
police", not much more than traffic laws; but it certainly has an impact:
I'm getting most of the spam from the USA ;)

-- Fil