ADMIN: List Review Disabled

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Gang,
I've belatedly disabled the REView feature on TECHWR-L.

This feature allowed subscribers to get a copy of the list
of subscribers, which was useful for letting people
debug their own posting problems or get addresses
for individuals.

In the five years that the list has been running,
only once before has the list been taken and
abused in this manner--however, given the
current problems with spam, I think it best to
simply disable the feature completely to prevent
recurrences of this situation.

In response to a query about this issue, I simply
don't think that it's appropriate for anyone, under
any circumstances, to take the list of subscribers and
use that list for their own purposes. Nobody subscribed
to this list to provide their addresses to anyone who
cared to send them messages--people subscribe
to this list to discuss technical communication issues
ON the list. What happens off the list and unconnected
to the list isn't my business, but when someone takes
the addresses of subscribers for this list that I've maintained
for 5 years and uses those addresses to abuse the trust
of the subscribers, that's my business.

Please direct any comments to me off-line.

Thanks, and please now return to the regularly scheduled
discussions--I had a good on-topic rant today, I believe. ;-)

Eric




*********************************************************
* Eric J. Ray, ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com, http://www.raycomm.com/
* TECHWR-L Listowner, co-author _Mastering HTML 4.0_
*   _HTML 4 for Dummies Quick Reference_, and others.
* RayComm, Inc., currently accepting contract inquiries.