On Tue, 4 May 2004, Stan Horwitz wrote:

> The ideal situation is never to need to remove an item from an archive.
> That's the entire purpose of an archive; its a record. Making it easier
> to tamper with a record of communications is a step backwards; not
> forwards in my humble opinion.

I would think we can all agree that we don't always operate under the ideal
situation.

It doesn't surprise me that the opinion has split over this, but I think it
really boils down to a matter of trust. We all are in a position of power, we
all could do bad things to our machines if we wanted to, but someone trusted us
with this power when we were hired as Listserv Administrators. There's nothing
easier than the ability to type in "rm -R *".

If making it easier to tamper with a record is a step backwards for you, IMHO
it isn't the ability to do this that is the problem, the real issue is the
list owners of your lists aren't trusted enough to be able to determine the
right and wrong reasons for removing a post from the archive. While that may
be true at your particular business or institution, that doesn't mean everyone
who runs listserv has that same problem. That's where I think the split opinion
comes from.

Could there be a compromise for the two sides so everyone can run their
listserver the way they see fit? Some ideas:

- a new access level for "archive editors"
- toggle enabling this feature on a site by site basis via go.user or some
  other site config file
- toggle on or off on a list by list basis
- grant the ability only to "Postmaster"
- other possibilities?

-Jim

--
Jim Serwinowski                 [log in to unmask]
UB Listserv Administrator       http://listserv.buffalo.edu