[wlug_org] Editing mailing list archives

[Ewen McNeill]

I've received a request to remove a post made to the WellyLUG Mailing
list about 18 months ago from the mailing list archive.  Apparently that
particular post was made accidentally (intended to be private mail), and
is now one of the top search results for someone's name and is causing
some embarassment/inconvenience.

Normally I'd say no to requests to edit mailing list archives because:
- it takes a bit of work to edit, regenerate all the archive formats, etc

- it means that people can no longer trust the mailing list archives to
  reflect what was in the mailing list

- removing it from the mailing list archives doesn't remove all the
  copies (due to the message being sent out to all subscribers, services
  that archive the 'net, etc)

as well as the flow on effects of setting a precedent of editing
archives (more work, less trust in archives, etc).

But in this particular instance the copy in the mailing list archives
seems to be the only one indexed by at least some of the search engines,
and it doesn't seem to be on, eg, archive.org.  So I thought I'd ask the
Wellylug admin folk what y'all thought.

Should I:
- remove the post in question, replacing it with a note to the effect
  that it's been removed at the request of the author and date

- edit the post in question to "blank out" whatever words are causing
  the problematic search results (and add a note of when/why it was
  edited)

- use, eg, robots.txt to persuade search engines to skip over that
  post (the post itself, possibly plus the month indexes for
  author/thread/subject/etc)

- do nothing, leave the archives and indexing alone

- something else (please specify)

If we can get some sort of consensus on what should be done, I'll do that.

Ewen