[conspire] (forw) Re: your mail

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> He has no power over an email after he sends it to you...that was
> my point and I hate the bluster.  "I gave you no permision"...
> Tough.  

In fairness, he probably flew off the handle at my mentioning having
posted our discussion (and I provided the mailing list's URL) because
part of our offlist discussion covered a legitimately private matter --
_but_ I had carefully removed that portion of our discussion from my
postings (which I perhaps over-optimistically expected he'd see for
himself, by checking the archive).

I.e., he'd have had a valid moral gripe if I'd posted anything that 
was in any way non-public, but I posted only my answer to his query that
he _should_ have made in a public LUG forum, that he instead sent me in
private mail.

For well over a decade, I used to write back to such people and ask if
there's some reason they went offlist into private mail, since I saw
nothing in their queries that seemed to require privacy, and inevitably 
the answer turns out to be "Oh, no reason; I just did it."  Upon further
scrutiny, the _real_ underlying answer tends to emerge as either "User
sends accidental offlist mail when trying to post to mailing lists that
don't munge Reply-To" or "User finds it convenient to seek free private 
technical consulting from busy technical experts because the tactic
usually works, and user cannot bother participating in a community."

So, these days, when people send me outright LUG questions (without any 
matters suggesting a need for privacy) via private e-mail, _especially_
people like Arnold who're writing me solely because they know I host
CABAL (he'd been here), I assume the right to post my responses here, to
benefit the public, as should have happened in the first place -- even
though that means posting minimal portions of the other person's private
mail.  A few people have a problem with that.  Oh well.