[Sca-Cooks] dazed and confused

[Stefan li Rous]

Greetings Terry. Welcome to the SCA-Cooks list. Your name seems  
familiar to me though, perhaps you have posted to this list before  
this thread or perhaps to another I am on.

Phlip replied to Terry saying:
<<<
>  okay, sorry i did not make myself clear the first time.
>
>  many of the lists hosted by lists.ansteorra.org up until
>  sometime on 23 jul 2007, had publicly open archives. anyone
>  was able to read the list's archives. obviously they could
>  not post to the list without being a member.
>
>  the sca-cooks list was one such list. people who were not list
>  members were able to read the list's archives using their web
>  browsers. this was a nice feature in that it allowed a person
>  to read the list at their leisure and not have to receive
>  e-mails from the list.

Terry, what's the problem? You should be able to do that anyway. Just
sign up as a member, put yourself to "No Mail", and read away. All you
need to do is go through the password process. >>>

This is what I would recommend. I wasn't sure if the lists on the  
Ansteorra server had this option or not, so I didn't speak up earlier.

<<<
>  the sudden shift in list policy raises questions as to why.
>  suddenly lists which have been publicly readable for years
>  are now suddenly member only.  >>>

Yes, I think it does legitimately raise such questions. However, had  
I been aware of this "feature", *I* would have recommended to the  
list administrators that they disable this public access. And the  
reason has nothing to do with any of the possible reasons I've seen  
mentioned so far. If an individual can easily access those archives,  
so can a spam robot. Such a robot can then harvest all those email  
addresses and then sell them to unscrupulous fiends who send out all  
the spam email, we all get way too much of. I think it is unfortunate  
that we can only execute those ... vandals. Oh, we can't? I think the  
laws should be changed. See my punishments-msg file in the  
Florilegium for more appropriate punishments than simple execution.

I am slowly disguising all email addresses in the Florilegium to keep  
the spam robots from harvesting there and so I support the  
limitations apparently added to the archives. It apparently could  
have been better announced, but I'm at a loss as how best to do that,  
especially to people who are already signed up on at least one of the  
lists.

I can understand your anger, but I happen to agree with the change. I  
send out a monthly article about what's new in the Florilegium. At  
one time I could simply send this article to all the lists without  
having to be a member. Then that changed because of spamming of the  
lists and I had to adapt to using this "No Mail" option or by finding  
assistants who were on particular lists to forward my article for me,  
when a list didn't offer that option. Yes, it is more inconvenient  
for me, and others, but I understand the reasons and have worked  
around it.

<<< Probably because Gunthar and/or Pug (I think Pug is overall admin of
Ansteorra Lists) decided that they wanted a bit more privacy. The
nature of SCA-Cooks is such that we tend to be on the cutting edge of
Medieval cookery discovery, and I suspect some folks might be tired of
having information out there in the Wide World before they can publish
it. >>>

I'm not sure whether Pug is still running the mailing lists on the  
server or not. I know that a number of the other responsibilities  
that Pug was originally doing on the Ansteorra server have been taken  
over by others.

Stefan
PS: You might want to glance through the food or even the  
blacksmithing files in the Florilegium. I like to think I do a  
reasonable job of saving the best messages on various topics while  
eliminating a lot of the dross that can show up in just straight  
archives.
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****