Dear List Owners: I want to thank the dozens of you who responded to some questions I posed to this list for an article about mailing lists in academe that was published in the Nov. 2 Chronicle of Higher Education. I can send photocopies of the article to those who want them. Just send me a snail-mail address. In researching that article, I became interested in the issue of how list owners govern. I heard from some people who said they had been tossed off of lists because of political differences with the list manager. The Chronicle has recently had two of its reporters tossed off of lists after they telephoned people to pursue stories about what they said on the lists. The listowners said that reporters did not belong and would inhibit discussion. These were not private lists, but ones with open, automated subscription mechanisms. My questions have to do with how much power list owners should rightfully possess? What are your policies about who gets to be on a list? Do you consider them private places or public places where journalists and ideological opponents may lurk? If you think of them as private places, why not create a private list for people with specified credentials rather than keeping them open to everyone except journalists and those you've identified as enemies? Are there any checks and balances or appeals processes that someone can use to try to stay on the list after you've decided they should go? If you are operating your list on a university-owned computer, does your computer center have rules about whether your lists must be public? I imagine that the types of incidents that I've described here are pretty rare and that most of you have never had to confront these issues. Nevertheless, I'd like to hear your thoughts are about how you might handle them. Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Thomas J. DeLoughry Senior Editor for Information Technology The Chronicle of Higher Education 1255 23rd Street, NW Washington, DC 20037 [log in to unmask] ph: 202-466-1061 fax: 202-296-2691