permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Bart Anderson wrote:

> Dear Moderator,
>
> I just noticed that the posts from the permaculture list are now going onto
> the public Web again.  For several years, they had been on the public Web,
> then about eight months ago, they stopped.

They have always been public, from the beginning, in 1993.
Consensus is that the archives should be made public so information about 
permaculture contained in the message
archives can be shared freely with others, to help researchers and encourage 
interest in permaculture. Many
regard these archives as a valuable Web resource, one that be accessed by 
databases and certainly by Google searches
(probably the most important reason).

> However, the big problem is that people's email addresses now seem to be
> displayed in the posts.  After the name of a contributor appears in the
> post, their email address is given.
>
> Example:
> "Mark Puzo mark_puzo_at_yahoo.com said in a previous post"
>
> Here is a sample post that is appearing on the Web:
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/2005-October/022257.html

This is the best the list software can do and is a good deterrent to spammers.
The other option is for every post to the list to be from (as described 
below):
From the admin's list config page:
Hide the sender of a message, replacing it with the list address (Removes 
From, Sender and Reply-To fields)
IOW every post would then be from permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
This will not be helpful in encouraging dialog.

> THIS IS VERY BAD, since it violates the privacy of posters and makes people
> susceptible to spammers.

It is not bad. How many have been spammed by having their email ID harvested 
from the archives?
When you subscribe to the list you are made aware that your email ID, though 
modified in appearance,
will appear in each message you post to the list and thus in the message 
archives. If this is not acceptable
you always have the option to unsubscribe.

> There should be some option in the program for the mail list that will stop
> this.

See above.

> It would probably be good to fix this as soon as possible.  Also -- to

Not necessary.

> remove the posts now on the Web that have the embedded email addresses.

That applies to all messages in the archives and I have no intention of 
removing them
or configuring the list to not archive all posts sent to the forum. I think 
99% of subscribers here
agree that this is the best way to do things. Make that 99.99%.

LL