mail archives (was: Another ACPI anecdote, plus footnotes)

[Derek Martin]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 03:44:52PM -0500, Tom Buskey wrote:
> Seriously, if you can remove all email addresses from the archive, I'd
> bet you'd solve 90% of the problems people have with creating an
> archive.

I'm pretty sure I've historically been the most vocal complainer, and
I've followed the arguments pretty closely.  I can say that

 - I have no problem whatever with archives existing
 - I have no problem with /my/ posts being archived [but see below]
 - I do not feel that any such archive need be protected by passwords

My one single objection has always been to the fact that my e-mail
address appears in a public forum which is very easy to harvest, and
that this unquestionably leads to an inflation of received spam (i.e.
at the mail server, before any filtering).  This includes cases of my
e-mail address being included in attributions and quotes in other
people's posts, which I have no control over.  The above 3 statements
are true, PROVIDED all references to my e-mail address are removed
before inclusion in any such archive.

As things stand, purely from the standpoint of self-interest, I no
longer care about this issue.  The reason for that is the address with
which I post is not a valid e-mail address.  Mailman allows for
certain tricks which facilitate this.  From the perspective of my view
of how things should be in the universe, I do still think that the
archive should not be established unless references to e-mail
addresses are removed.  However for obvious reasons, I no longer feel
the need to argue the point quite so vocally.

Actually, I'd like to see this behavior on the physical messages which
are sent out by the mailing list software to the subscribers also; but
I'm not even going to go there...

> The other 10% will beat the topic to death with (a few) real and (many
> many many ) hypothetical situations until you give up in frustration.

Based on my recollection of the discussions, I believe removing
addresses will remove much closer to 100% of the complaints.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Thank the spammers.

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