>I'll ask that you respond here to LSTOWN-L for further discussion >on this point, and that any revised draft that you may write also >be posted here for further comment. Absolutely! I wrote the draft letter and posted it to LSTOWN-L for just that purpose. The intent is to rewrite and refine the letter before it goes out to 910 people, and to have the support of list owners in doing it. Let me first clarify a few of the goals I tried to achieve with the draft: (read on before commenting, please) #1 Not to sound like an advertisement. I don't want to make this letter come off as an advertisement for our product, because that just annoys people. I could go on and on about the wonderful things people will be able to do with our product if you'd only change your notebooks to public :-), but I don't that's a great approach. #2 Not to make the thing too complicated. I'm afraid that laying out each argument will just make the message too complicated. #3 Not be too preachy or absolute. That being said, I can see from your feedback that there are problems with the letter on counts #2 and #3. Your feedback also brings up very valid points: these were not brought up in the discussion several weeks ago. To my mind, the most compelling reason for keeping notebooks=private is a desire to keep track of who has access to the notebooks. I've seen an argument that lists which are electronic journals should also have this, and I think there are arguments both ways, such as, again, knowing who receives the magazine. Unless you track the SUB and SIGNOFF messages you get, your REVIEW list will not reflect who has looked at your notebooks. I'd be suprised if list owners do track this information. If they do, then it sounds like a feature to add to the administrator version of our software. :-) Either way, I think those who made this argument had a very valid point. >Your letter should NOT state that there's no advantage to doing so. My words were obviously badly chosen. When I said "from a security perspective it does not make sense to have private notebooks" the phrase "from a security perspective" is the key phrase. I think that point is true. There is no security advantage to making people subscribe before searching, if subscribing is open to all and automatic. You do not close the list archives off from anyone by having private notebooks when your subscription is open. Now, if subscriptions are reviewed (and sometimes rejected) or something else like that, then the subscription is not truly "open", and yes, there would be a security change. None the less, I do not think I wrote anything incorrect when I made that statement. I have to admit that my schooling is in philosophy and I can make, err... uncommon interpretations of language. :-) CHANGES ******* I think this response really captures the essence of it: >Your letter should point out the consequence of the administrative >hassle involved, and that those list-owners who have not >consciously decided to make this arrangement may wish to eliminate >this unnecessary administrivia Right! I'll change the message to reflect the "conscious" choice nature of it. In many of the cases, I expect that list owners were not conscious of the implications of their choice (I may be wrong, we'll see). I can see, though, that to someone who did understand what they were doing, my letter is heavy handed and could offend them. Sorry: I didn't think of that. But, because I knew I couldn't predict reactions, I thought it prudent to get feedback from this group. Hopefully people on this group will see this as a good thing and not take offense at my admittedly clumsy drafts. I'll post a rewrite soon. Thanks! John Buckman