There was one landmark law case last year (in the UK I believe) in which a
subscriber asked for a message to be deleted, I think it was a list but it
may have been a newsgroup, mind you a newsgroup should expire of it's own
accord anyway. The server manager refused and was taken to court.
Unfortunately for all server managers in the UK (at least) the case was won
by the plaintiff and the company that ran the server was ordered to pay a
fine, costs and remove the article.
Okay in this case it is exceptional but if someone demands that something
potentially libellous be removed it might well be seriously worthwhile
considering doing it, just to avoid potential complications.
Duncan

-----Original Message-----
From: Winship [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 January 2001 17:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: editing archived messages


On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Russ Hunt wrote:

> This seems really important to me.  In a way, it's unfortunate that
> it's possible to edit them. What Douglas said:

Well, I think listowners shoud be able to edit the archives as there are
somtimes glitches in postings which cause some subscirbers' mail systems
to freak out one way or 'nother.  I will edit to fix things like that,
editing as little as possible, like getting that damn period out of the
first column, or the unseen command at the end of a posting.

I would not ever go as far a Scout (Cleo, if you prefer) seems to go with
at least one of her(?) lists. To me, the archives are exactly that, the
archives, a record of the list, the list's history: missent commands,
gross excess quoting and all.  If people want to find clean material in
the archives they need to post clean material.  If they know the listowner
will clean up their messes why should they bother?

To me the archives are an accurate history of the list, to the extent
technically possible.  If I go messing with it just because I can
I can no longer cite it as an authority (I didn't say that...Yes you did,
it is item xxxxxx in the archives).  For my prime list have ten years of
archives (co-owner and I had to store two early years privately as they
were going to be dumped, got them reloaded after expantion of storage
capacity).

Those archives are the history of the list, including the warts.  A
prettified archive is not an archive.

Douglas