[MUD-Dev] META: Making the list public?

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

Proposal:

Please comment.

A web site is established which details the list, its purpose,
policies and other related data.  Archives of list traffic are made
available untouched to list members only via email request
(standardised format).  Copies of list traffic are available on the
web site with the email addresses munged as follows:

    -- All period characters (".") replaced with commas (",")
    -- All at characters ("@") replaced with asterixes ("&").
    -- Order of the userID and site/domain reversed (I'm not 
       keen on this one)

Without the last rule "bubba at site.dom" would become "bubba&site,com". 
With the last rule it would become, "site,dom&bubba".  The reason for
this approach as versus BrandonG's approach of nuking the entire
UserID section of the email address is that it remains fully human
readable and human usable as is, and no sematic content is lost.  Only
machine processing abilities are lost.  <<The choice of replacement
characters is not cast in stone.  I could also see doing a
"bubba(at)site,dom".>>

The address munging pattern would be posted on the web site.

  <<Yes, it is still machine parsable.  I suspect the odds however of
a web-scanner unmunging and parsing the above forms and extracting
valid email addresses is proximate to zero.>>

<<BrandonG and others!  Would this satisfy you?>>

I am not entirely happy with making all archives (even munged
archives) publicly available.  I expect that I'll make only a fraction
of the total list traffic available to public browsers.  (First guess:
only the digests for the same day of the week as the current day will
be readable at the web site)

The web site and associated list details are publicised on
r.g.m.announce.  The ban on mentioning the list in other media is
removed.

I'm still debating how to handle membership.

NOTE:  THIS IS A PROPOSAL, NOT A STATEMENT OF CURRENT POLICY OR
ACTION.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...