Helen Hegener

Okay, one of the other things I've been working on this morning is
changing the settings for the list archives so they're only available
to listmembers. I've usually run lists as open to viewing by anyone,
whether they were on the list or not, figuring that people could read
the archives of a list to see if it was one they might want to join
or not, or people could refer others offlist to specific posts by
sending them the URL to the post, or just because it seemed
friendlier than keeping closed, member-only list archives.

But a number of things came together recently (interesting how that
happens, isn't it?) to cause me to change my mind on this policy.

First off, there's been an interesting discussion on one of the
politically oriented lists I belong to about whether or not it's
appropriate to forward a person's posts offlist without their
permission. FWIW, I said I didn't think so, but another person made
good point that they relied on that particular list to keep their
state list informed and needed to be able to share information,
perceptions, perspectives, etc., etc. Anyway, I've suggested on that
list that we need to rely on common sense and courtesy for these
kinds of decisions...

Then someone wrote to us about one of our lists, expressing dismay
that it had open archives, because she'd done an internet search for
her own name and found that the list's messages came up in the
search! I wasn't even aware one could do that. Her concern was that
unfriendly relatives might gain access to what she'd written on that
list - which seemed like a valid concern to me.

Now of course it's easy to just join a list and gain access, and
we're all aware of the "don't post it unless you want it bounced all
over the Internet" syndrome. Still, it seems as though if we're to
err on the side of caution it would be wiser to make the list
archives closed instead of leaving them open to anyone doing an
internet search.

So this list now has closed archives, available to list members only.

Dead domains. I'll bet you wondered when I'd get to that, huh? <g>

Actually, it's no laughing matter. We learned a hard lesson this
morning when a good friend sent us a note advising us to check
something out, and when we checked, we were flabbergasted.

We thought we were all paid up to keep our old home-ed-press domain
name (our first URL, from when we published books), and we had it
mirrored to our home-ed-magazine site because so many people still
had it linked through their sites (I think we found about 15,000+
links to that URL). But somehow the registration on that domain name
expired (we're still trying to figure out how it expired without our
knowing it), and it was bought by a wholesale company, which leased
or rented it just two days ago to an overseas outfit that turned it
into a porno site.

WARNING - please DON'T check out that old home-ed-press site out of
idle curiosity, because it's one of those "virulent" porn sites that
will keep opening windows until you crash your browser or your whole
machine. Save everything before trying it if you're really *that*
curious to see what's there.

And PLEASE - If you have a link to the old home-ed-press domain name
on your website (or your support group's site?) please change it to
home-ed-magazine.com as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for
helping us straighten out this serious problem.

Helen
* * * *
Helen Hegener, Managing Editor
Home Education Magazine
HEM-Editor@...
http://www.home-ed-magazine.com