[MUD-Dev] META: Making the list public?

[Brandon Gillespie]

On Thu, 17 Jul 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:
> Brandon Gillespie's solution to this for the Cold* lists is to remove
> all the email addresses from the posted archives.  I don't like that
> solution -- for one it kills amost all attributions, and for another
> it renders almost all posts anonymous, removing much of any sense of
> context.

Not really.  What it does is change the address from/to:

      joe at host.site.com
      ???@host.site.com

AND, since 99% of the people actually put their full name in with their
email address, as:

      Joe Friday <joe at host.site.com>

It really doesn't make anything anonymous, as the archive system will use
'Joe Friday' anywhere the name should be, and will ONLY use
???@host.site.com when it can't figure out anything else (in the headers).
In the mail body it just does ???@blah.

Then there are the message signatures, which sorta remove anonymity :)

Just for note: everybody I've talked to loves how the archives handle
names, and I've yet to hear a complaint.  Even in the few cases where
people's mail name doesn't include their real name, its still signed and
easy to figure out (go to it and skim them, see how much anonymity
exists.. http://www.cold.org/info/lists).

I can say that if the lists are available on the web without some sort of
email masking system I will no longer be posting to the list (too many
email-addr searching engines out there).

-Brandon Gillespie