Jack Schmidt wrote:

> 3. Do you have guidelines on what lists to allow to be archived or can any
> list be archived?

Assuming you are talking about web archives, I ask the owner.  If the
owner does not respond I assume they do NOT want their archives on
the web.  Sometimes this is wrong, of course, but I would rather err
in this direction.  Some lists think of themselves as cozy little
groups of friends and do not want their discussions widely publicized.
And we have many lists who do not care much about archives either way
because the value of the information on those lists (e.g. "Notice:
we have a meeting tonight at 7") often depreciates very rapidly.

If they do want web archives, I make them password-protected and send
the owner some information explaining that if this is too annoying we
can make them publicly accessible.  I also point out that if they are
publicly accessible, the public will be able to access them...and that
they need to think about (and possibly discuss on their list) the
expectations of their list members with respect to whether the
discussions are presumed to be public or private.

Margaret King
Michigan State University