Rob Harrison wrote:
> I'm with you Piers. Can we have it removed? I think it opens us all up
> to more spam, not to mention the 'private' becoming public. I've
> noticed a dramatic increase in spam in the account with which I
> subscribe.
Jon Mitchell wrote:
> Me too. Brought my mailbox to a standstill with over 450 mails in 1
> day - all of them "delivery failed", addressed to random characters
> at my domain.
> No proof it was nabble, but seems a coincidence.
Nabble has been archiving the List for quite some time (early 2006?), so
it would seem an unlikely cause of an increase in spam. Is it possible
that you are mistaking the dating from your awareness of Nabble (ie.
recently) with its actual implementation of archiving of this list
(2006) and ascribing "coincidence" where none exists? Note that this
issue also came up*on this list in June 2006, September 2006, November
2006 & March 2007 (and possibly other dates - you can search Nabble's
archives for the incidents ;-) ).
Note that, according to the Nabble website:
http://www.nabble.com/help/Answer.jtp?id=14
"Is my email address protected?
Yes. All email addresses on Nabble are obfuscated.
And, we do NOT share, sell or trade your email to anyone."
You can verify this by looking at those archives for said obduscation.
In contrast to this, the "official" list archives at:
http://lists.tako.de/html/Olympus-OM/
have already perhaps undermined your perception of privacy and, unlike
Nabble, do not obfuscate your email address in their mbox form, making
them an easier source of address-harvesting than Nabble. So, Nabble
might even retain better obfuscation and "privacy" than the
freely-available (no subscription required) "official" list archives.
Meanwhile, Nabble seems to have what may be more "user-friendly"
archives (in terms of searching and accessibility) for some people. It
is effectively another "backup" of the archives.
Currently you all are members of a List that will almost certainly have
a higher proportion of lurkers-to-talkers ratio. While you may see this
as a "nice place" (and, yes, I agree it is), and therefore one where
email address harvesting cannot occur via mutual consent, that would be
somewhat naive. It only takes a single 'spammer' to subscribe and begin
obtaining valid email addresses in their inbox. Of course, as per the
above mention official list archives, that is completely unnecessary. To
think that you may retain some degree of privacy by subscribing to a
"private" List that, actually, anyone in the world can subscribe to may
have left you with a false understanding of the degree of privacy you
retain.
As is often stated, it is sometimes best to assume that any words posted
in a forum are, in fact, posted in a public place.
In the meantime, such list archives allow new people to find the List,
and the accessiblity allows people to determine whether the List is for
them (for instance, letting them know that it isn't just "OM", and that
there is a certain degree of "OT" that occurs). Rather than have a
"walled garden" that may diminish the community through isolation (you
don't know what you're going to get until you join), you have a space
where those joining and enriching the community ca n be doing so via a
transparent awareness of what "we" are. Also, you have one where people
can search for a single answer easily, without having to join and ask a
single question only that has been answered a million times before
(which, I know, everyone is always willing to assist with, but,
nevertheless, there is some degree of redundancy in such a thread for
most community members).
So, it's possibly "win-win", as they say.
I'm not defending Nabble itself as an entity, nor that someone may have
"subscribed" the list to Nabble (in early 2006!) without the listowner's
permission or subscribers' general awareness (The Listowner may be aware
of this, and be okay, even happy, with it. Hell, the Listowner may have
even done it as a "backup"). However, it might be worth considering that
the consequences of Nabble's list archiving may be being overstated, and
that the benefits may be being overlooked.
Cheers,
Marc
Noosa Heads, Oz
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