I should respond to this in. I guess I'll pick this one.
First. If I read Peter's post correctly, it seems that he had the stuff
posted to a blog so that *he* could read it easier through an RSS feed, and
the fact that it therefore became open to the "general public" was a side
effect. Now, I don't know a whole lot about RSS feeds except that that's how
I get my podcasts of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," but I seem to recall
reading somewhere that there either already existed or were in development
email clients that worked on the RSS feed principle. Couldn't one of these,
if they exist, have been used, thus avoiding the current spate of hard
feelings that seems to be going around right now?
Second. If I understand his post correctly, then he was a lot like me in
figuring that while this was a select group, it wasn't a select,
super-secret, double probation group. I've been a member of one of those
groups, where you join by invitation of an already established member only,
where a supermajority of the already existing membership has to vote you in,
where you are not to speak the name of the list in public, and where even
forwarding a post from the group to your spouse (if you have separate email
addresses) is considered a breach of the privacy of the group (although
letting her read the post over your shoulder isn't). This didn't strike me
as being one of those groups. If I may liken it to a building, we had our
own room not to keep people out, but so that we could tell everyone else who
was interested where to find us on a regular basis.
Third. I had no presumption of privacy because well, first of all, this is
the Internet. Expecting privacy on a list with so many people involved, most
of whom I've never met, seemed a little silly to me. It was as if I told a
family story on a small-town, local radio station, and was surprised when it
ended up on stations halfway across the country. Not only is it all
broadcasting, and there was a chance that someone just at the edge of the
local listening area would repeat the story on a station that took it 100
miles further to the west, and so on; but there was also the very good
chance that someone just passing through and catching it on their car radio
would take the story all the way to the west coast with them. That's what
happens when you broadcast.
Fourth. I had no presumption of totally proper attribution. This is probably
related to the previous item and my experience with the super-secret, don't
ever speak our name in public, group. Sometimes you want to retell the story
almost exactly as you heard it, because paraphrasing it doesn't do it
justice. And yet, you don't want to "out" the person who told the story. So
you pull a "Dragnet" and change the names and a few details to protect both
the innocent and the guilty. When you do that, you end up removing the
attributions. But then how different is that from *telling* the same story
in everyday life: "I know someone on the Internet who said..." Now I have
writer friends who are *very* unhappy with their exact words being used
without their permission [and without them being compensated for it], but I
think that this is a bit over the top. We do this every day in real life,
real-time conversation. Do we really want to get to the point that one
college has taken it, where in their plagiarism code you actually have to
cite casual conversations with friends from which you got an idea? Yeah,
it's nice if someone says, "I got this great idea from Keith Gatling who
posted on ISED," but after a few iterations of this great idea, who's gonna
remember it was me anyway? Just the web historians.
Fifth. As far as clogging one's inbox goes, I see that Peter Stinson has a
gmail address. I also have one (which I use to suck in and consolidate all
my other email addresses), and it's been my experience that not only does it
take a lot of effort to clog that up, but that you can filter, color-code,
and label the incoming stuff so that it's more manageable. In the gmail
account I'm using right now I've not only got mail coming in from three
other accounts, but labels for email related to school in general, incoming
quizzes from students, church, home, the super-secret listserv group, the
local neighborhood watch group, and of course ISED.
Sixth. Does this force us to rethink some things? You bet your sweet bippie
it does. And I hope that we respond a lot better than the record industry
has over past few years to the changing reality that they have to deal with
(much of which they brought on themselves). Their response is only helping
to make themselves less relevant and hastening their demise. I'd like to
think that our response will help to keep us relevant.
--
keg
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Keith E Gatling - Computer Instructor
Manlius Pebble Hill School
5300 Jamesville Rd
DeWitt, NY 13214
315.446.2452
http://www.gatling.us/keith
Some teachers teach subjects. Others teach people.
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[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
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