I've noticed that comments made years back, and more recently, on the list,
appear in various searches I've run on GOOGLE. This certainly is a place
where the email addresses of the list and the parties appearing in the post
are accessible. What can be done to put a stop to that?
Also, the fact that these items come up in searches certainly makes it
important that the subject line be the actual subject of the post. There have
been plenty of posts with a title of (just as an example) "MV2000 PSU" that
are 20 posts down the road from the last even remotely related item. If every
post to the list with that title produces a hit for the search engines looking
for MV2000, I'd bet they get a lot of spambot fodder from that. What's more,
if you want your posts to be locatable by the search engines, it certainly
doesn't help that the discussion topic wanders under a completely irrelvant
title.
Perhaps the solution would be to purge the email addresses before items are
posted to the list.
The HTML filter would certainly be a good idea. Once people realize their
HTML posts don't find their way to distribution, they'll take the 1 second to
turn that feature off.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay West" <jwest(a)classiccmp.org>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 9:53 AM
Subject: list changes & RFC on archives & rack chassis
1) Ok, here are the two things I was considering doing
to change the mailing
list settings....
A) Reject posts to the list which contain any kind of HTML content. I think
this would be fairly unobtrusive - most people don't want HTML posts here
anyways. And - I would bet that most all SPAM contains some form of HTML, so
this might not get rid of all SPAM forever, but I think it would make the
very few that come here dwindle to even less. Comments?
B) I also like the 'self-policing' idea of making posts to the list from
non-subscribers get a subject tag of [OL] or something like that. This one I
am not sure how to do off the top of my head, but would think it pretty
straightforward. Comments?
2) WRT the archives at
www.classiccmp.org THAT is a project I have fallen
far behind in. When I moved the list from the old ISP to the new ISP (me in
both cases, long story)... something broke in getting emails from the list
to the archive mechanism. I noticed this maybe a month ago, and when I
started digging into it I realized it was time for a change - the archives
there are not searchable and that just isn't acceptable. So - I have been
looking for software to HTML'ize the mailing list that allows searching as
well. I really need suggestions here as my initial searches came up less
than satisfactory. The archives are currently using hypermail. My criteria
is something that is FreeBSD and Sendmail friendly, and allows searching the
archives OR viewing them by thread. I don't mind if the emails need to get
stored in a database, but if they do, mysql must be the database used (picky
aren't I). The only package I found had statements all over it to the effect
that "this package will no longer be supported by the author". I did notice
the list archives for netsaint that are stored at sourceforge look REALLY
nice, and do allow searching, but didn't see a good way to follow threads. I
would greatly appreciate it if anyone can point me to mail list archives
that work well (for the user) and look nice (or to software for unix that
does the same). Please send these suggestions to me off-list at
jwest(a)classiccmp.org
3) This isn't really important - just random "what if" thinking out loud -
I
was considering moving the mailing list and mail list archives off to a
separate machine that does nothing but classiccmp. This is being considered
for logistics reasons, not for horsepower/load reasons. I have all the
spare components (cpu, memory, drives, etc) but no spare rackmount chassis.
I can just order a rackmount chassis under my company which I'm perfectly
willing to do, but was wondering if anyone had a rackmount chassis just
laying around that they didn't need and would donate to the cause. The key
criteria - EIA units (space!). I would strongly prefer a 1U (1 EIA unit, or
1.75 inches) tall unit. We charge on rackspace by the inch, so I want the
machine to take as little space as possible so I can obviously sell the
rackspace to other paying customers. I would consider a 2U (2.5 inches) tall
unit (which I already have spare) as a fall-back plan, but definitely
nothing taller than that. Anyone have a spare laying around? If so, please
contact me OFF LIST at jwest(a)classiccmp.org
Regards,
Jay West