Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 17:08:08 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>, WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
From: Samuel Lubell <lubell at cais.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: On Google and WSFA policy
Cc: jekindell at aol.com, macbuccfo at msn.com, erjablow at cais.com,
	mike.nelson at seahunt.org
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

At 12:19 AM 4/21/02 -0400, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>A discussion at the Ginters' last night made it clear to me that
>we don't have the consensus I thought we did on placing fannish
>information online, searching for it, and viewing it.

Wow!  What did I miss on Friday?  Who was objecting to what?  Could someone
please fill me in.

My gut instinct is that both the website and the Journal are public
publications of the club.  The minutes have to be accurate but if there is
something else in either that people don't want publically accessable, we
could probably work something out.

>The public web consists of billions of web pages put up by anyone
>and everyone, including WSFA.  Many WSFAns including me also have
>personal web sites.  All public web pages are indexed by Google
>(http://google.com/) and other search engines.  Anyone on the Internet
>can use Google to search for literally anything.

Yes, but Google can't find anything that isn't already up to begin with.

>A Google (or similar) search was how Sam Lubell found my "Alternate
>Disclaves" April Fool's article five years ago.  He was scanning for
>any message mentioning Disclave.  He asked my permission to print in
>the WSFA Journal, which I granted.  This ultimately led to my joining
>WSFA.

Hmm, as I recall, I saw this on Usenet but the principle holds.

>A Google search was how many people have found WSFA and Capclave in
>recent years.  Most of the hits on the WSFA and Capclave web pages
>appear to be via Google or other similar search engines, or via
>manually created indexes such as Yahoo.

Yes, and one of the main reasons we have a web site is so that fans can
find us easily.

>A Google search does NOT find medical records, credit reports, tax
>records, financial records, military records, social security numbers,
>credit card numbers, voting records, purchasing records, criminal
>records, or anything else private.  Nor does it find files on your
>PC, or what web sites you've viewed, or any email that you've sent or
>received.  NONE of this private information is on the public Internet.
>And I wouldn't read it if it was.

Right.  Google is essentially an index of web pages.

>If there is a consensus among WSFAns that certain information on
>WSFA's web site should not be found with a Google search, we can make
>our web site accessible only to WSFAns, or we can block out more than
>just the street addresses, or we could take down the whole site.

Making our site harder to find would defeat the purpose of having the site
IMHO.  Now there are things we may want to password protect (such as email
lists) but those are rare.

>If there are one or two people who strongly object to anyone searching
>for their name, we could replace every instance of their name on our
>web site (e.g. in the old WSFA Journals) with their initials.

Again, I need details.

>So, what's the consensus?  What should our web policy be?  Thanks.