[ale] (no more) SPAM talk...

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Wednesday 21 April 2004 06:05 am, Geoffrey wrote:
> William Wylde wrote:
> > Geoffry:
> >>> Why bother to obfucate at all?  Why not just write a little script
> >>> that removes the e-mail addresses from the posts in the archive?
> >>
> >> Why have an archive?
> >
> > I think I'm going to drop out of this thread.  It really doesn't matter
> > to me, anymore.  :-) I'm subbed via a white-list only account, and my
> > personal spam filters are getting just about every bit sent to my main
> > account, with very few false positives (gotta love "Thunderbird").
>
> There you go. :)
>
> > That said, I simply thought the purpose of the archive was to give all
> > and sundry access to the collective wisdom on the list- no neccessarily
> > direct access to the members themselves.  I was just proposing what I
> > saw as a simple solution to what people were complaining about.
> > However, having read further in the thread, I can understand your desire
> > to let people get answers to their questions "directly from the horses
> > mouth"...
>
> I apologize for, what may have appeared to be a short, snide response.
> One of of those days when I was quite busy, but still trying to get a
> point across.
>
> As a reinforcement to retaining addresses in the archives, I've sent
> private email to three different people I located in archives regarding
> different issues just this past week.  I received responses from all.  I
> don't always get my answers from the posts, but I often do by pursuing
> further information via the private email to the poster.
>
> This to me, is terribly powerful and most definitely too valuable to lose.

No doubt.  I was just pointed to gmane (gmane.org) as a potential solution.  
Gmane does two things:  First, it is a mailing list to news gateway.  The 
news gateway never expires messages, so everything is always there and 
readable.  It provides an archive--both as a news group and also as a web 
archive. 

Second, it obfuscate the mail addresses.  You can reply to the address and you 
get a challenge.  After replying you can then send email to that user.

It looks like it might be pretty good.  I think I heard that Debian lists run 
on this, now.

Michael