Re: Seeking feedback on changing visibility of email addresses in the list archives

[Bob Proulx]

Ian Kelling wrote:
> The current situation: The original email addresses of each message has
> always been available in the mbox archives, which are linked to in each
> html thread listing. In the html view: anything like x@y in the body is
> replaced with address@hidden and in the headers, "Name <x@y>" is
> replaced with "Name", and people who just send as x@y become
> address@hidden.
> 
> I think we should stop doing this. Some reasons:

I would welcome it not happening.  Because it is often hard to
understand the archives because so much of the page is obscured.
Often just random things that used the AT-SIGN (which I wanted to type
here but have learned to avoid doing so due to the mangling) get
mangled.  Sometimes I go and download the mailbox archive simply so
that I can read a particularly hard to understand message.  It's a lot
of extra hassle.  Therefore I would welcome it not happening.

> The spam situation has changed. html scraping of addresses was a major
> source of spam long ago, its not anymore. Filters are better, spammers
> can get the address from the mbox anyways and most people's address are
> known to spammers already.

Agreed.  I don't know how much web scraping for addresses is actually
done these days.  It feels like it is not the issue now that it was
back in the old days.

Personally I have never felt that trying to keep an email address
secret has ever been an effective way to deal with spam.  Because
inevitably someone else other than you that you have exchanged email
with will have their contact list exposed.  I have many times gotten
spam from *insert social media site here* from someone who gave their
contact list to that site to send invites.  It's usually willful
complicity rather than non-willing.

  Is your man secret?  Did you never hear say, Two may keep counsel,
  putting one away? --Romeo & Juliet

  Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. --Benjamin Franklin

> There's precedent: Debian doesn't. Some w3c guy wrote an article about
> why it shouldn't be done
> https://www.w3.org/blog/systeam/2008/09/11/email_address_obfuscation/

I would like to echo a few words from that article.

  W3C’s mailing lists are generally spam-free even though we invite
  anyone with an email address to provide feedback (subject to the
  posting policy of the given mailing list) — this openness is an
  important part of W3C’s process, so we invested in the tools needed
  to make it happen.  If others have spam problems they should do
  likewise!

The same is true of the GNU mailing lists too.  Open to all.  Yet very
little spam generally.  Because we have invested in making that possible.

> Making public lists simpler and easier to use is beneficial at this
> point when most people are unfamiliar with them and opt for
> alternatives.

Makes sense to me.

As Karl said though this will increase the number of requests from
people who have web searched for their address and then are offended
that something they publicly posted is posted publicly.  And again
since you are going to be the one dealing with that then the decision
is up to you.  But I will cheer you on from the sidelines. :-)

Bob