> Is it any of your business, as list owner, what people send > off-list? Even if it's in response to list traffic? Who appointed you > the censor of all that someone else sends?
I am one of several co-owners of a self-moderated list with 1250 subscribers. We own the list and we set the rules for continued participation, so I guess you could say that we appointed ourselves. We do not force anyone to join the list, we do not force anyone to remain on the list, and we do not charge anyone for the privilege of belonging to the list. If they do not like the way we run the list, they can leave and start their own list.
Perhaps this sounds arrogant, but the fact is, we are providing a free service
on our own time, and we believe we have both the right and the obligation to
determine how that service is used. Most of our subscribers apparently share
our belief that it is wholly inappropriate to send an OOO in response to a list
posting, because more than half of the complaints sent to the list owners are about OOOs.
-- Paul Russell
