On Thu, 4 Sep 1997, C wrote:

> All the notes of caution are legitimate.
>
> Nonetheless, I feel that the proponents of review by owners are still
> not considering the ramifications of real life and real people.
   [snip]
>
> And what about "scan?"  Review=owner eliminates the scan option.  A
> scientist posts something about bioremediation and a few weeks later
> I read something which connects.  I can't remember his whole email
> address, but remember a snatch.  So I scan the list so that I can
> contact him about it.  I can no longer do that, so must send the info
> to the entire list if it is to get to him - assuming he is still sub-
> scribed (which I cannot know).  If he is not still subscribed, I have
> wasted my effort.
>
> All I'm saying is that there are aspects to review=owner which ought
> to be given serious consideration.
>
>                                   Trista
>
 Trista, as the owner of a largish list (almost 3,200 subscribers in 47
 countries) which in the interests of protecting the subscribers privacy
 we have set to REVIEW= OWNERS, we get around situations such as the one
 you described above by being very willing to provide an e-mail address of
 subscriber A to subscriber B (or even of sending the entire subscription
 list to subscriber B) if B shows a need for it.

  And in the example you gave, you could always search the list archives
  for the original posting on bioremediation and get its poster's address
  that way.  In short, if you need a specific address there are ways to
  get it.  Making the subscription list available to anyone for any
  purpose seems to me to be a solution that exceeds the legitimate needs
  that doing so would serve.

  I realize that this is essentially a philosophical difference between
  different listowners.  The decision that each one will make will depend
  finally on his or her individual proclivities and the appropriateness
  for the subscribers to that specific list.

Judith Hopkins, Listowner of Autocat
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     http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~ulcjh