[time-nuts] glossa7 being whiney on eBay...

[Dr. David Kirkby]

John Ackermann N8UR wrote:
> Brian Kirby wrote:
> 
>> I seen the ad's on E-bay yesterday.
>>
>> Since I had dealings with him, and made comments to this group about 
>> the dealings, and the fact another person had the same dealings, I 
>> stand byside what I said.
>>
>> Our post show up in a lot of search engines - Something to consider 
>> before you comment.  Probally from the stored archives.
>>
>> Brian - N4FMN
> 
> 
> I *think* (but am not certain without a little research) that I can 
> structure the list archives to be private and accessible only to 
> subscribed members.  

Brian,
You don't need help from Mailman, *IF* you wish to do it.

99% of search engines (Google included) will respect a 'robots.txt' file directing them not to index 
certain areas of a web site. You could still have your page with links to the archives:

http://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/

so *anyone* could look at them (member or not), but their content would not be indexed by search 
engines. You might be able to put 'meta tags' in the outgoing posts with Mailman, but these tend to be 
old hat and ignored now.

 From what I can determine from the URL, you would need just this one line in a robots.txt file at the 
top level directory of wherever febo.com is.

Disallow: /pipermail/time-nuts/

> If there's a consensus to do that, I'll see what I can do.

I personally think the archives *should* be public and so searchable. There's some bright people on 
this list, with valuable information, that would be useful to others. Restricting its access by search 
engines would in my personal opinion be a very bad idea.

Perhaps make it clear when people sign up that the list does get archived, and so they should be 
responsible about what they say.

Despite doing it myself (both here and elsewhere), I think you will find it's against eBay rules to 
mention others userids in this way, or comment on autions in a public place. I can't be bothered to 
check the exact rule - eBay seem to ignore their own rules anyway.

The people making the comments about the seller say they are accurate and stand by them. Others have 
stated they had no hassles - nor did I for that matter. Anyone reading the archives will form their 
own opinion.

Personallly I think it would be good if peoples email addresses were not visable other than to 
members. The method used to disguise them (replacing '@' with 'at') is hardly effectve. Unlike the 
"spiders" used by responsible search engines, those used by spammers to gather email addresses will 
not respect any robots.txt file.

A better method of discusing the email addresses might need a bit more work.

-- 
Dr. David Kirkby PhD CEng MIEE,
Senior Research Fellow,
Department of Medical Physics,
Mallet Place Engineering Building,
Gower St,
University College London,
London WC1E 6BT.