[Mailman-Developers] Improving the archives

[Steve Huston]

I'll admit to not having read previous discussions on this topic, but
I'll also add my 2 <insert-lowest-denomination-coin> here:

On 7/2/07 11:06 PM, Terri Oda wrote:
> - better address obfuscation (maybe by generating pages through cgi)

I run a few Wordpress sites, and there's a plugin I use called
PHPEnkoder which does a good job of this.  It basically wraps the
address around a little bit of Javascript; if you have Javascript turned
on in the browser, it's seamless, and if not you see "Javascript
required to view address" or something like that.  The theory is that
bots and such don't run JS, so it's "safe" from harvesting.  I'll leave
it to the list as to how true an assessment this is, but it Works For Me :>

>      * Add a search option

I know there's been patches around forever that integrate ht://Dig with
Pipermail; maybe some way to do this, while still making it an option
that can be tuned?  If ht://Dig is there and you turn on the option, it
works, but if it's not then it's not required?  This would satisfy the
"not adding a billion dependencies", but may be overkill as well.  I'll
also happily admit to not knowing much about the cost of search engines
to a system.

>      * MUAs usually make URLs clickable. An new Archive could be used  
> when posts are distributed, in the footer, so that each message has a  
> link to the whole thread in the Archive.

This would be a Godsend.  A group at work here runs an old homebrewed
exploder, and a few years ago I tried to convert them to Mailman.  They
liked everything they saw, up until the point where they couldn't refer
to some kind of short and simple message number, and get right to that
message in the archive.  The current system generates a number based on
a simple incrementing index of the list, and many months after a mailing
people will refer to "message #483", and know they can view it at
http://hostname/foo/listname/483.html - which is also posted in the
footer of the message sent out.  Of course, if the archives were based
on Message-ID headers, this may make such a number a bit unwieldly, but
if it were some kind of simple-ish system I might finally get rid of
those old lists :>

-- 
Steve Huston - W2SRH - Unix Sysadmin, Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences
  Princeton University  |    ICBM Address: 40.346525   -74.651285
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    (609) 258-7375      | headlong into mystery."  -Rush, 'Cygnus X-1'