KineJapan member list

[Adrian Wood]

Dear Aaron and fellow subscribers,

As the person who first speculated about the possible abuse of the
circulated list I would be sorry to see it be unavailable to us for
legitimate purposes.

All I would ask is that we all agree not to abuse it and any new subscribers
are asked to undertake to do the same.

In reality we can only trust people to be responsible.

Perhaps an e-mail to the owner or administrator of CineAsiaML from one of
our Spanish-speaking subscribers might help those of us who are being
plagued by what is effectively spam to be removed from their list


With best regards,

Adrian



-----Original Message-----


From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]On Behalf Of Aaron
Gerow
Sent: 19 February 2006 17:11
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: KineJapan member list


Several of you have suggested the following:

> May I suggest that the moderators of KineJapan refrain from
> periodically posting the complete list of KineJapan members.  The list
> of addresses can be too easily misused, unfortunately.

This is certainly something we can discuss and I would like to hear
opinions about the pros and cons of this.

I for one did not receive any of CineAsia's mail at either of the
addresses through which I subscribe to KineJapan, so I am suspicious
about whether anyone misused the KineJapan membership list. This may
have resulted from the use of some other list, but one can't be sure.
Certainly, there has always been the danger that someone might use the
KJ membership list, but as far as I know, there have been no cases in
our 10 or so years of existence of someone misusing the list. Perhaps
this is the first case (or it may not be), but this has not been a
recurring problem at all.

We originally decided on posting the list for a couple of reasons. The
first was simply to build the Japanese film community: it would be nice
to have a list that anyone could use to see who was doing Japanese film
and how to contact them. I use the list periodically to find the
address of someone I need to contact and in that sense it is very
helpful. The other reason for posting the list was to make membership
open. When we were thinking about starting KineJapan, we decided for
the sake of ease and spontaneity not to make it a moderated list, where
all mail must be checked by a moderator before going out to the list.
In order to avoid obnoxious mail, we thought we should try to avoid the
anonymity which does allow people on message boards to regularly
slander others: KineJapan would be a list where everyone knows each
other and thus where everyone has to take a sort of public
responsibility for their statements. This may not be the only reason,
but so far, KineJapan has been a wonderfully civil mailing list: in our
10 or so years, I've only sent out about 4 or 5 warnings and
unsubscribed one or two people. (Or maybe we Japanese film fans are
just better people?!)

In recent years, especially with lots of members, sending out the list
has also been a good means of weeding out dead addresses and getting a
better sense of how many of us there really are.

At the same time, KineJapan has grown beyond our wildest imagination:
we now have over 600 members. With so many people--and some subscribing
under fake names--just posting the list no longer guarantees openness
and publicity. And certainly there are chances it can be abused (I
sometimes warn people not to abuse the list when I send it out, but I
don't do that all the time).

I can think of a number of options and I would like to hear comments
from members on these:

1) Keep things as they are. Since this may be only the first case of
abuse of the member list, perhaps this is not a serious problem.

2) Keep sending out the list periodically, but always add the warning
that it should not be used for mass mailings, mailing list
subscriptions, etc. Perhaps the number of times I send it out could
also be reduced. In the early days it was practically every month, now
it is only about 4 times a year.

3) Stop sending out the list, but still allow members to obtain it
whenever they want. At this point, anyone who subscribes can send a
simple message to the list server and get the member list. How to do
this is explained in the WELCOME and INFORMATION messages.

4) Not only stop sending out the member list but also prohibit anyone
but the owners from obtaining it through the list server.

Perhaps there are other options we can think of, but I would like to
get a sense from the members of KineJapan which option they think is
best. Since this is an issue affecting all the members, don't send
comments to me, but to the list so that we can all read them.

I look forward to your comments.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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