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

[John Ackermann N8UR]

Thanks for the info, David.  Good points all around.

There certainly seems to be a mix of views and no consensus.

My own view is that I favor the archives being open provided that doing 
so doesn't inhibit the discussion here.  Lacking any evidence of that, 
I'm going to leave things as they are unless/until something major changes.

John
----
David Kirkby wrote:
> Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> 
>>
>> Brian,
> 
> Sorry, I ment John  there.
> 
> I'll just correct something I said, since it was incorrect, and whilst 
> not a concern specifically of this mailing list, I'd rather it corrected.
> 
> Also I will mention another technical issue you will encounter if you 
> try to make the lists private. You may never be able to do it for posts 
> within the last year or two, no matter how hard you try. Even if you 
> destroy the hard disk you stored the data on!
> 
>> 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/
> 
> 
> Actually, the
> 
> Disallow: /pipermail/time-nuts/
> 
> in robots.txt
> 
> would stop the homepage for the archieves:
> 
> http://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/
> 
> being indexed too. If you left the directory structure at it currently 
> is, you would need to have multiple lines in robots.txt
> 
> Disallow: /pipermail/time-nuts/2005-June/
> Disallow: /pipermail/time-nuts/2005-May/
> Disallow: /pipermail/time-nuts/2005-April/
> 
> etc
> 
> to stop the contents being indexed, but not the homepage.
> 
> *IF* you were to stop indexing like this, it would be better to move the 
> data of the archives to
> 
> http://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/archives/
> 
> and still leave the homepage for archieves at
> 
> http://www.febo.com/pipermail/
> 
> Then just the one
> 
> Disallow: /pipermail/time-nuts/
> 
> would stop the contents being indexed, but not the homepage for the 
> archives.
> 
> BUT, I still stand by what I said though that I feel its NOT a good idea 
>  to stop the information being public.
> 
> You seem to have a mix of opinions on that.
> 
> Also be aware, that if you made the archives private today, it MAY (and 
> I am not sure here) remove them from Google's cache, which it keeps for 
> a LONG time.
> 
> Type this line into google:
> 
> g8wrb davek site:www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk
> 
> and you will find two links, to pages I wrote, both of which are broken.
> 
> However, click Google's "Cached" links and you wil find what was on 
> those pages, with the date last retrieved in March 2004. So despite 
> Google not being able to update that information in 15 months (since it 
> was long since removed) it still keeps a copy.
> 
> 
>> 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.
>>
> 
>