Re: Any concerns about signing www*xemacs.org up for Google's Free WebSearch and SiteSearch?

SJT> Reply-To set. APA> See http://www.google.com/services/free.html APA> I sign us up for this unless I hear any well-founded APA> dissenting opinions. SJT> I guess this is as good a time as any.... SJT> There's recently been a discussion on Mailman Developers SJT> about the value and dangers of giving Google access to your SJT> mailing list archives. Note that this is a separate issue SJT> from the web site. However, the archives are linked from our SJT> website, and AFAICT from Google's FAQ they will follow those SJT> links. SJT> The value seems to basically be what Adrian has pointed out SJT> (and Kilian Foth in a recent post to c.e.x): Google indexes SJT> your site for you. Barry Warsaw mentions that a commercial SJT> search engine was donated to Python.org---and they ran out of SJT> capacity. XEmacs isn't that big yet (but why not? ;-), but SJT> the maintenance effort is a big deal to us for exactly the SJT> reason that we're not so big. So from the maintenance point SJT> of view this looks like a big win (not to mention the SJT> benefits of a web-standard interface for users). Yep. SJT> The downside is that, as Chuq Von Rospach puts it, "you're SJT> handing your list of subscribers to the spammers." I hasten SJT> to add that it's not that bad; you're actually only handing SJT> posters' addresses out. We keep the subscribers' list closed SJT> for exactly this reason. But the spammers can and do harvest SJT> list archives just as they do web sites and Usenet. Can't they do this now? SJT> I assume most people are aware of this. (If you're not, and SJT> the revelation worries you, you might want to look into Jason SJT> Mastaler's TMDA: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tmda/.) SJT> However, I would be interested to know if people feel that SJT> the benefit to searchers is not worth it, and we should SJT> figure out how to close off the archives, especially to SJT> Google et al. It's worth it for me, including mailing lists. SJT> Replies to me, especially if you feel the archives should be SJT> closed to prevent harvesting by spammers. I'll summarize in SJT> a week or so, and we can have public discussion then based on SJT> some idea of how people feel, if it seems controversial. Please let's not make it much longer than a week. Interested parties will respond within hours or days, unless they're offline. But who knows when everybody will be back online. Thanks in advance, Adrian SJT> -- SJT> Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp SJT> University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN SJT> Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; SJT> ask what your business can "do for" free software. -- Adrian Aichner mailto:adrian＠xemacs.org http://www.xemacs.org/