Re: Holy Spam!
On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 12:13:28PM -0400, Jon Earle wrote:
> This open list policy that so many lists have, while it _may_, and I'm
> placing a lot of faith and emphasis on the 'may', offer the occasional
> newbie or (individual who couldn't be bothered to subscribe multiple
> addresses) the ability to post[1], that, coupled with gatewaying to news,
> I feel is just plain irresponsible. It's a _very_ poorly thought out
> policy that I feel does more to harm the list community that help
> (particularly the list gateway to news).
I've solved a great deal of problems by doing things like googling on
error messages. The (often very useful) results are usually found in
lists like this one. It's not enough to be able to search the lists of
one particular archive after joining that list; the usefulness of this
technique comes from the fact that I can search so many lists at once.
I suppose the emails could be blinded somehow before being passed on to
archives or usenet groups, though it is occasionally useful for example
to be able to follow up with someone whose bug report you find on a
list.
Personally I gave up on the idea of hiding my email address a long time
ago. I want people with a legitimate reason to be able to reach me
without jumping through hoops. With dictionary attacks against mail
servers and third-party leaks of email addresses (think what a virus can
do with a correspondant's inbox), I'm not convinced that obfusticating
my email address is going to continue to be a good anti-spam solution
anyway.
--Bruce Fields
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