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Hey everybody!!!! very few of you posted your opinion about archives and
our lists. Does this mean you don't have an opinion???? Hard to believe
:) I will not open it up unless I hear some responses OK (below is the
latest scoop)
Thanks
Kay
Subject: STATUS: Mailing list archives
Resent-Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 20:16:17 -0800 (PST)
Resent-From: listowners-announce(a)rootsweb.com
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 97 19:44:04 PST
From: Karen Isaacson <karen(a)rand.org>
Reply-To: listowners(a)rootsweb.com
To: listowners-announce(a)rootsweb.com
There've been lots of questions. I haven't answered most of them.
Because I'm a lazy under-achiever? Nah, that's not it. The thing
is, things are still a bit in flux.
News, in no particular order. (But some of it is important, so skip
the boring bits and read the interesting ones.)
- Brian caught my flu, so hasn't had a chance yet to revise the
isearch/ifetch code to allow a more sensible directory stucture,
something we desperately need with over 2000 mailing lists. So
no new lists have been indexed yet at
http://searches.rootsweb.com/examples.html
although by now I do have the old messages from all the lists (even
the oft-neglected ones still on the old servers) prepared for indexing.
- We observed late on Friday that when things are really rocking, the
archiver software (the stuff that builds the nifty threads) interacts
in an unfortunate way with the operating system. It's not a serious
problem, but we may end up moving it onto a different server. If that
happens, there will probably be a new URL. There probably will be a
new URL anyhow, because...
- Something odd happened last week. On Tuesday, I gave someone a
new e-mail address, and they added it to their web page. (It was
a "mailto" link, if anyone cases.) The address hadn't existed before
then. On Thursday, less than 48 hours later, guess what address was
spammed? We knew things were bad, yes, but that bad? OK, that bad.
Given things are that bad, we've revised the approach. Brian and I had
hoped to have a demo up of what we'll be doing, but the flu kept him
from finishing the script, so you get me waving my hands instead.
- So, what do we intend so that the web-crawlers don't scoop up all
your addresses? A front door, of sorts. Anyone accessing the archives,
either the threaded ones or the search engine or, ultimately, the search
engine to the threaded messages, will have to come in via a particular
page. The page will have a box in it. In the box, you'll type the name
of the mailing list. (We'll make it robust, so that JONES, JONES-L,
JONES-D, jones, Jones, etc., all work.) Then you click on "submit" and
are
deposited on a page (build on the fly by a cgi-bin script) that lets you
search the Jones archives, or follow a link to the threaded Jones
messages. Brian says he can set this up so that, once you're in the
"archive area", you can easily go from page to page, but that if you try
to jump into the middle, you'll instead be diverted to the front door
where you have to type a list name. So no robo-crawler will be able to
wander through our message bases collecting addresses, but your
listmembers won't have to remember a "password" any more elaborate than
the name of the list.
- Recent digests (probably a month's worth) will remain available for
ordering via e-mail in the usual manner.
- I'm aware of two lists that index or cross-reference their messages
by message number or digest number. Are there more? If there are
only two, I can run a script on your existing archives to add the
message and/or digest number to each message, so that you could
use the search engine to call the message up that way. I don't want
to promise this for your =future= messages, though. I can do this
now, or I can do it later, no hurry in letting me know.
- Until we can switch over to searching the threaded messages, we'll
continue to update the unthreaded message base in parallel, so that
all but the most recent messages will be searchable. If I can get
things organized right, I'll leave the e-mail search up, but only
the most recent messages will be available for searching. That should
limit the amount of computer resources consumed. There will be no
instruction or training or hand holding or other support for the use
of the e-mail search, but if you know how to use it already and want
to find a message you saw come through day before yesterday, you'll
be set. I'm sorry, there just aren't enough hours in the day for
me to provide "better training".
- If you want your messages included in the threaded message base =now=
be sure to subscribe archiver(a)lists.rootsweb.com to your mailing
list.
- If you decide you don't want your messages included in the threaded
and unthreaded messages bases, be sure to add the address
archiver(a)lists.rootsweb.com to the reject list for your mailing list.
(Most of you can access this via the "edit selected files" button
at the bottom of the utility page for your list.) If you don't do
this, then on the cutover date (target: December 1st), the address
archiver(a)lists.rootsweb.com will be subscribed to your list and
a threaded message base will start being built.
- If you want to participate, but want to start with a clean slate,
write to listmaster(a)rootsweb.com and ask that your old archived messages
be omitted. We can package them up and arrange for you to FTP them,
if you'd like.
- None of this is final. Well, if you ask me to throw away your
archives, and I do, I probably won't be able to recover them. But if
decide to participate, and don't like it after awhile, let us know
and we can remove the search engine, threaded message base for your
list, etc.
- Someone commented on the mail-to's being to the poster rather than to
the list, so that interesting messages might be lost. I don't know what
the answer is here. On ROOTS-L, where we have 9 years and 11 months
worth
of archived messages, I think people would be confused if someone found
a
query in 1993 that they wanted to respond to, and posted their response
to
the list. "Those sound like my ASCHNEWITZes! Shall we compare notes?"
Plus many of our lists are closed at this point, so only subscribers can
post (as an aside, this isn't true of ROOTS-L, where the messages are
screened), so someone responding to an archived message by writing to
the list might only end up in the error bucket. Let's revisit this
once we're in production, and have a better sense of the size of the
problem. One thing we could do is also include an option to "post to
the list" on the page. But would that be a good thing, or would that
invite noise? If you have comments, I've set the Reply-to on this
message to listowners(a)rootsweb.com, as that seems like the best forum
to explore these concerns.
- - - - - - - - - --- - - - - - - -
Subject: Archives Delayed ...
Resent-Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 19:14:02 -0800 (PST)
Resent-From: listowners-announce(a)rootsweb.com
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 18:54:01 -0800
From: Brian Leverich <leverich(a)rootsweb.com>
Reply-To: listowners(a)rootsweb.com
To: listowners-announce(a)rootsweb.com
CC: "Dr. Brian Leverich" <leverich(a)rootsweb.com>
Hi all -
Modest bad news: Marc and Karen are ready, but I've just now
finished some essential hacks down in the C++ bowels of the Isearch
search engine. That's thrown the schedule off, we're going to have
to delay the start of the full archive implementation.
There's not a lot of work left to do, but it may be as much as two
weeks before we turn the full implementation on because of the
interplay of consulting assignments (Karen and I have to eat ... ),
the December RSL (which comes out next weekend), and other things.
That two week delay is a worst-case estimate, though -- I think
we'll have most or all of the archives software online much sooner
than that.
Tim Pierce, if you want to get a X-NO-ARCHIVES blocker built into
SmartList's procmail filters, hack fast. You have a little time ...
Everybody, sorry for the delay. -B
--
Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L
RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/
P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich(a)rootsweb.com