New GnuPT-Version and new WinPT-Website

[Mark Rousell]

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John W. Moore III wrote:
> Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> Mark Rousell wrote:
>>> I rather think it's up to someone posting an announcement about "new
>>> WinPT-Website" to provide the URL, don't you?
> 
>> Which dodges both the question and responsibility.
> 
>> He's already doing you a favor

The text of mine that you are quoting above was sent to Robert
privately, not to the list. If Robert replied to the list as well as to
me personally then I only saw his direct reply and I didn't see it via
the list. Anyway, the following point you make (which is essentially the
same as the core point that Robert was making)...

> Gotta agree with Robert.  If My 81 y/o Mother can point out to Me
> [snip]
> preferred Browser to install a Trojan, Key Logger, etc.?

...is a good one. As I said to Robert in private mail, the issue of
trust and of taking personal responsibility for the verification of
information is obviously important. But the point I was making to
Robert, which is that in general in my view it's quite a good idea for
an announcement to include such basic information as how to find the
thing that the announcement is promoting, is orthogonal to (i.e. does
not conflict with) your and Robert's point. Read on for why.

The thing to remember is in this context is that taking personal
responsibility for verifying information received is a valid and
relevant principle regardless of how much or how little information you
have available to you to begin with. In this specific case it would
still have been an important and relevant principle even if the original
announcement had included a URL (as, you must surely admit, is normal
and common practice for promotional announcements in this type of
environment). Thus there is no logical basis (in terms of personal
responsibility for information verification) to intentionally avoid
including a URL.

In other words, including a URL would have done no harm (since the issue
of personal information verification would be the same as if no link was
included) and furthermore it would tend to align with the common and
every-day idea of making promotional announcements, i.e. to tell people
what they need to know to find the thing you're promoting!

You also quote Robert's comment about an announcement being a favour to
the audience. As I said in my reply to Robert, it may well be the case
that making such an announcement is doing the audience a favour but it's
not the only way to look at it: The audience may well be doing the
announcer (or the entity that is being promoted) a favour by reading the
website or by trying the software that the announcement is promoting.
This being so you might think that it could benefit the announcer to
make it as easy as possible for the audience to accurately and quickly
find what is being promoting without having to go through any extra
steps to get there. Whether or not the audience /choose/ to go through
those extra steps to personally verify the information provided to them
in the announcement is, of course, entirely up to them.

Anyway, I've said enough on this issue. I don't with to further pollute
the list with this off-topic discussion. If you don't agree with my view
on this then we'll just have to agree to differ. :-)

The only reason I posted my initial comment to the list in this thread
was simply because I thought Barry had accidentally overlooked including
a URL in his announcement.

- --
MarkR

PGP public key: http://www.signal100.com/markr/publickey
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