[balug-admin] Fwd: Returned mail: see transcript for details -- webmaster@balug.org failure?

[Michael Paoli]

Ah, ... yes, ... perhaps that's something we should change.

I noticed that on at least the main web page we've got a few mailto:
links where the e-mail address is ... uhm, shall we say tweaked a bit
apparently in the interest/intent of being more spam resistant.  This may
reduce the occurrence of e-mail addresses getting spammed, but it also
has the downside that for anyone that just uses the link directly (e.g.
"clicks"/selects it and expects it to work) ... well, it doesn't work
and fails miserably, and this can be baffeling for someone who's not
very aware of exactly what's going on and why it's "broken" (as far as
they're concerned, and technically not a valid e-mail address), and for
even those more aware of what's going on, it can be somewhat to rather
annoying, or at least a bit of a nuisance (e.g. one might accidentally
forget to "correct" the e-mail address before sending, or might not
notice it and send to invalid address, or one might make a typo or
cut out one too few or too many characters when "correcting" the e-mail
address before sending).

I also notice both Dick and Larry have their e-mail addresses on the main
page ... each of them appearing exactly twice, and once each with such
"spam protection", and also each once with no such protection ... so
I really don't see reason to have spam protected versions there when
the "unprotected" (and functional :-)) e-mail addresses are also there
and directly linked ... and by now those addresses have probably been
thoroughly "harvested" anyway (and even if that weren't the case,
probably doesn't make sense to have both the direct functional, and
munged versions of each on the same page).

So, ... yes, ... it's been noticed, ... question(s) is(/are) what exactly
do we want to do about e-mail addresses (especially on the main web
page).

There are also questions about e-mail aliases, e.g.:
webperson at balug.org
and exactly where that goes to ... not sure exactly where within
BALUG that is setup and maintained.

Rick Moen also brought up point earlier about e-mail addresses on
the mailing lists (those used for contact/administration).  Having
direct e-mail addresses, rather than some alias, makes things much more
clear as to where such e-mail goes.  The only downside, or potential downside
I've noticed with that, however, is in the list information, one then sees those
e-mail addresses directly - even if there are several of them, e.g. as
can be seen towards the bottom of:
http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/balug-announce-balug.org
"list run by " ...
Hmmm, glancing at that again, however, I notice the
mailto: is for -owner@..., so perhaps there's a way to tweak the
configuration so that instead, it would also just display the
-owner@..., instead of the individual e-mails (and then presumably the
individual e-mails would only be "visible" somewhere within the
list administration interface).

Quoting jim stockford:

> 
> here's the bounce-back data generated from my clicking
> the balug.org Webmaster link at the bottom of the page.
> 
> email To: field was
> > To: webperson <nospam>@balug.org