[RsR] Mailing list archives -- public or only for subscribers?

[Martin Maechler]

Dear R-SIG-Robust subscribers,

most of you got on this mailing list without having been
explicitly asked, namely just by attending the Treviso workshop
(and by not explicitly *un*subscribing since the list has been
created).

For this reason, and for "data protection" reasons, I had set up
the mailing list *archives* to be only available to list
subscribers (and you need to enter your e-mail address and
mailing list password to get at them starting from the mailing
list "site"  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-robust )

There is one drawback with this approach, and that's the reason
of my posting:
You cannot send an URL ("link") of the list archives or a specific
message to outsiders; something which can be useful and happens
quite frequently with the R-help list archives, e.g.
 >> please look at this interesting posting on R-help :
 >>   https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-December/082432.html

or any other list archives of public R (or other) mailing lists
on our server: All of these are open to the public.

Of course, there is one single advantage of non-public mailing list
archives: They cannot be misused by "address harvesters".
Though E-mail addresses are automatically changed by replacing
the single character @-sign by the four letters " at " every
where, this may not be enough protection for some people...
Of course, this applies only to those *posting* to the list, not
to everyone subscribed.

Now I'm proposing to *open* the archives of R-SIG-robust to
public reading, and am interested in getting feedback on this,
particularly if you oppose it.  {non-feedback would mean
implicitly be taken as "yes, of course, that's fine, go ahead!"}

Martin