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

[David Kirkby]

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.
> 


-- 
David Kirkby,
G8WRB

Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/
of if you live in Essex http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/