Hi, all,
Our archives are public because we use a free archiving service
(www.mail-archive.com). I should add that the archives have -always- been
public, even before Mail-Archive, but they didn't turn up on Google searches
because they were archived as digests. Search engines, in those days, tended
to ignore large text files, but I think Google would probably pick up things
like that by now (I should add that our e-mail addresses were fully exposed
in those files). In any case, they were always there for anyone who wanted
to download them from Liz's site and were never restricted in any way.
That's the way of the Web--you can never assume that what you write to a
group will only be seen by members of that group. The same goes for Yahoo
groups, MSN groups, etc.
The button at the bottom of the messages allowing one to e-mail the poster
is new. It wasn't there when we first joined the archive service. In the
actual message, the e-mail address is concealed, so it can't be picked up by
automatic spam harvesters (Yahoo does something similar--you can only see
the first part of an e-mail address). I have not noticed any increase in
spam since using mail-archive, so I presume that this device is effective,
but it means that someone you don't know might try to get in touch, as they
might with a Yahoo archived message.
I have never been too concerned about providing security beyond the basic
level, i.e., making sure our e-mail addresses can't be harvested by
spammers, because (a) I am not the list owner and cannot set up our own
archive service and (b) lace-making is a fairly innocuous topic. (A support
list for divorced parents trying to get custody of their children would have
to have higher security, for example.) I haven't seen Arachnes posting
anything that appears to be any kind of security risk (like "Hi, I'm a
13-year-old girl and here's my phone number" or really personal details).
Stalkers tend to be more interested in lists with a younger clientele.
There's always a trade-off-- privacy vs. availability. If you want a list in
a public place like the Web, you have to accept the reality that your
messages will be available somewhere, to someone who's not on the list. The
only way to avoid ever having your messages made public would be to do
everything by private e-mail, to encrypt your messages, and to make sure
that no one stored old messages on a networked drive. On the other hand, it
does give lace-making more exposure. There's precious little on the Web
these days about, say, Mechlin or Point de Gaze, and so a Google search on
specialized lace terms will probably unearth some of our postings and lead
people who are interested in lace to Arachne.
Vivienne asked a while ago why only some messages appeared in a Google
search and not others. My guess (since I wasn't looking over her shoulder
while she was doing the search) is that she was using the default Google
search, which hides redundant search results. For example, if a search
brings up 20 results from a single site like our archives, Google will show
only a couple of those results, assuming that the searcher will want to see
results from as many *different* sites as possible. At the bottom of the
page there is a link that tells you that you are looking at a limited search
and that you can click to see all search results.
I hope this answers most of the questions. Feel free to write to me if you
still have concerns.
Best wishes,
Avital
Arachne moderator
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