Fwd: privacy, safety, and freedom -- Re: Whether To Design Open Source Public Records Equipment

[Zenaan Harkness]

> >> really curious whether you received my question regarding pgp.  Next
> >
> >> > > Our emails are at _least_ filtered by the list spam filter, right?  So
> >> > > why
> >> > > don't _you_ use a pgp signature?
> >
> > It does not seem useful to me, for the things I want to achieve.
> 
> Well, that sounds important.

To me, it's about relevance, and what's important to me.  Other people have different things which are important to them.


> > There is also the possibility that for some types of communications, it
> > could be harmful.
> 
> How do you see?


OK, here's another example of a discussion where you ask me genuine questions, and I want to be courteous to you, and then at some point in the conversation, like with this last question, I start to realise that (at least) this part of the discussion should be public, so that other people can benefit from it.

When there are misunderstandings, or viewpoints not understood, it is tiresome for me to spend a lot of time and energy explaining things privately to one person, when the SAME amount of time and energy could be spent explaining it to that one person, and because it's public then many people might benefit.

This is the point where I get frustrated, since you failed to realise that your questions should have been public - that this part of the conversation should have been public.

(There is another benefit to me with public conversations - sometimes other people have different views to me, or share different considerations, making the conversation even MORE useful to the person asking the question.)