I wrote:

>>Now, all of this boils down to the fact that people can not get the list
>>of addresses by themselves.  However, by the nature of some of our
>>discussions, it is often helpful for two or more people to communicate
>>amongst each other "off the list" per se, either because they do not wish
>>to go over old turf which is extremely familiar to them but perhaps not to
>>the rest of the list, or because the appropriateness of their discussions
>>are really not for the list anyway.  That said, I do sporadically post the
>>list of subscribers to the list itself.
>[snip]

and Vince Sabio responded:

>Nope, that's not a justification. If anyone needs to contact a specific
>list member off the list, he must necessarily *first* know that the other
>list member exists. The only way that this happens is if the other list
>member has posted to the list -- in which case, he has already voluntarily
>revealed his presence on the list, anyway. But on *most* lists, this
>represents only about 5 to maybe 20 percent of the subscribers. Thus, you
>are "revealing" the addresses of 80 to 95 percent of the subscribers who
>would otherwise be anonymous -- and some of those people might prefer to
>retain their anonymity.

Perhaps I should have explained some of the specific dynamics of my list
which might help clarify this a bit.  For example, it is list policy that
after a period of 2 weeks, if you have not done so already, you MUST
submit an introduction to the list describing who you are and why you
wanted to join my list, and any other relevant information about you that
you want the other list members to know about.  I make it very clear when
I subscribe people to the list (I have mentioned my screening policy
previously) that this is part of the deal with being on my list.  If they
do not follow this rule, they will be unsubscribed from the list after
their lurking time has expired.  Also, I send reminder messages after a
week to new subscribers who have not yet posted an introduction just to
remind them that they need to post an introduction and to warn them that
they will be unsubscribed if they do not do so.

The nature of anonimity is an interesting question.  For most lists, I
agree, some people would wish to retain their anonimity.  However, for a
list like mine, where the very people joining it are people who, for all
intents and purposes, live in an anonymous society as they can not
recognize other people in the first place, if people were allowed to
retain their anonimity, my list would quickly deteriorate into a less than
useful list for all the people involved in it.  We must all be able to
trust each other to some degree, and that we know who is on the list via
the introduction process I just described is our way of gaining trust in
each other on my list.  Additionally, I require that anybody joining my
list must also provide both a first and last name to me and to the rest of
the people on the list in their introduction.

>Now, if you warn people that you do this *before* you subscribe them to
>the list, then at least you are giving them the option of not subscribing
>(though I still don't see the necessity of posting the addresses of
>subscribers who have never posted to the list).

It should now be rather clear from my list description that this event
does not occur for more than about two weeks at a time.  If it did, the
person would no longer be on the list.

I should further add that all of this information is given to the person
before I even add them to the list, which also gives me a chance to verify
that I have a proper e-mail address so we don't start generating random
error messages, and also it allows me to prevent any possibility of
spoofing of e-mail addresses.  I do require a response to my message to
them before I add them to the list.

>However, in that case, I
>would argue that you no longer have a "non-closed environment" (see my
>initial comment, above).

It is certainly closed to anybody not on the list, but as I said above, if
anonimity were to be preserved in a list like mine, the list itself would
cease to exist.  The very nature of our list, the topic of which is
prosopagnosia (which basically means that all of us on the list are unable
to recognize the faces of people we have seen before) causes this to occur
for us in our every day life.  People who come to my list do not generally
wish to remain anonymous in my list, and if they do, they are discouraged
from joining the list.

Some time back, I recieved an e-mail from a person who wanted to join the
list under a pseudonym as the person had been harassed previously by their
spouse and had recieved an unaffective restraining order against the
spouse.  (Restraing orders are rarely ever worth the paper they are
written on.)  The person had moved out of state and had attempted to begin
a new life in their new location.  They had asked that I add them to the
list under their pseudonym.  At that point in time, I did not know how I
wanted to deal with the situation.  I understood this person's concerns,
but I did not want to unilaterally make the decision.  I asked the people
on the list at that time for input, and it was eventually decided, about a
week later, that we were not going to allow pseudonyms on our list.

I have not heard back from this person since I sent the idea of that
decision along to the person.  I regret that the person was not able to
join our list as the person might have gained quite a bit from it, but
list anonimity does not at all fit within the nature of a list based upon
trust and openness.

Glenn Alperin
list-owner (in name only, as all such decisions based upon list conduct
are made through discussion on the list) of faceblind

For more information about prosopagnosia (face blindness), check out
http://daniel.drew.edu/~galperin/folks.html