one good thing about a forum vs email list

[Diane Whitehead]

With a forum, you can edit what you've posted, either immediately, or any time later.   If you do it immediately, there is no mention of the fact.  If you do it later, then your message will include the fact that you've edited it and when you did it.

However, an email posting gives no chance of correction.

Diane

[David Pilling]

With the 'list. It says in the rules everyone gets when they join:

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

And yet folk do sometimes ask. I will only change things under threat of legal action, it is very messy.

There is the problem of changing history - A says something B responds, A has their post removed and one is left wondering what was wrong with B.

It is impossible to remove stuff from the web. I can never bring myself to point this out to people. There's the internet archive, there are people who pirate mail list contents, once you put something out there you will not get it back ever.

At the moment various England cricket players are being dropped over tweets they made 10 years back, which people have dug up.

Then we have the jokers who remove things from Google using EU law.

The problem is there are unfriendly actors who are archiving everything and will make it public if it suits their purposes.

The only consolation is that for the most part, no one cares.

[Martin Bohnet]

Well, if you want to keep others from editing their evil deeds, you can still quote them quickly - unless you're up against a mod or even admin....

[Martin Bohnet]

Talking about unchangeable List messages... Michael Campbell seems to know of the forum... Lucky guessing, divination, or even divine (or bovine?) inspiration? who knows...