mainSavannah Administration - Support: sr #109165, Why aren't the mbox files...

 
 

sr #109165: Why aren't the mbox files protected and public available for everyone?

Submitter:  Simon Sobisch <mensch>
Submitted:  Tue 11 Oct 2016 07:45:26 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  Project mailing lists Priority:  5 - Normal
Severity:  3 - Normal Status:  None
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Operating System:  None Open/Closed:  Closed
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Sat 15 Oct 2016 11:18:25 PM UTC, comment #2: 

i'd just like to add that savannah lists are the same as all other gnu/fsf lists in this regard. those with public archives have mbox files available through the ftp you found. that's how lists.gnu.org lists have always been set up, with the basic theory that public archives are a good thing for technical lists, for the reasons alfred wrote.

nonetheless, it's possible to mark archives as private (in the mailman interface, after a list is created); that will make both the html form and the mbox form inaccessible except to list members.  (which is not guaranteed protection, because spammers know how to subscribe to lists.)

Karl Berry <karl>
Site Administrator
Fri 14 Oct 2016 08:12:19 PM UTC, comment #1: 

The shortest answer is that those decisions were made years ago and no one from that era is currently active with the mailing lists.  Additionally the Savannah folks (the ones you submitted this ticket to) are not the administrators for the mailing list archive.  Only the FSF admins have access to the mailing list archive. So for most details such as this you would need to ask FSF at < sysadmin AT gnu.org > for information and changes to them. For us Savannah Hackers we just live with what the FSF has provided to us.

However my own opinion is that all of the lists may be subscribed to by anyone. Many do. Many archive sites subscribe to the mailing lists and archive the messages. Full archives of all of the messages are therefore easily available elsewhere.  The archive is not of subscribers.  The archive is only of messages from people who have posted to them.  Anyone who posts messages to public mailing lists must expect that the public will read those messages! Trying to hide those addresses seems a silly useless point to me. Most messages posted will have been seen and read and archived by potentially thousands of readers and email archives.

Because this is not a bug for simple accounting I am closing the ticket.  But feel free to post additional comments here.  We will see them.  Or if you wish a more natural discussion flow please write to < savannah-help-public AT gnu.org > for a discussion list.

Bob Proulx <rwp>
Site Administrator
Tue 11 Oct 2016 07:45:26 PM UTC, original submission:  

I ask because we consider moving them from SF to savannah. SF makes them only available directly to the project admins (ftp with login, only granted for the specific project admins), savannah places them at a public ftp server.

The main reason I ask is because spam protection (If I'd like to SPAM I'd just get all mbox files and export the sender/recipient from them).

Additional there is the option to "spy" on questions/answers from specific mail addresses.

I don't want to expose all the mailing addresses from the archive (the web interface "protects" the mails by removing everything after an @ in the mail body and by doing similar on the sender address).

Simon Sobisch <mensch>

 

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    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2016-10-14 rwp Open/ClosedOpen Closed

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