** Sometime around 13:55 -0400 9/20/98, Glenn Alperin said:

>>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.

Yes, I understand (I think) why anonymity (and lurking) can be problematic
-- but it is certainly a VERY closed environment that you have created,
primarily because of your screening process and introduction requirement,
and thus does not fall under the heading of "non-closed mailing lists."
(I'd use the term "open mailing lists," but someone would call me on it.)

Note that "closed environment" is not being used in a pejorative manner;
it is not synonymous with "closed mind" or "closed circuit" (whoops,
wrong example), but simply describes an environment in which all
participants can be said to have some meaningful knowledge of each
other. An example of this is a mailing list for a college course;
certainly, in this case, the instructor can make the subscription list
accessible by the members of the class, to help facilitate study groups
and the like. (Though it seems to facilitate dating more than anything
else -- but hey, at least it's productive in some manner. <g>)

My comment related specifically to lists that have more-or-less "open"
(there's that word again) subscriptions. Certainly, in a closed
environment, access to the subscriber list is not as significant an
issue. I still, however, have yet to hear any justification for
permitting anyone other than the list owner to access the subscription
list in a non-closed environment.

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