Tim: >> The sign-up page [1] makes it clear the name is optional, so I can't see >> how an optional thing can be a vital part of your signing up. gilpel@xxxxxxxxxx: > Well, you could think that is you don't supply a name, your email address > will be used to identify you. That page only mentions the name in relation to a list of users. That being a member list for the list admin to look through. It doesn't give out any other suggestions for what it might be used for. > OK. So, it's for list-owner to write to subscribers. But what would change > if the name or username was used in the list instead of the email address? > Couldn't he write to you just the same? The list owner could. But nobody else could. There are some advantages in being able to send private mail to anyone on the list, and there are disadvantages, as well. Seeing as I knew no-one on this list before I joined, and I see no reason why anyone on here *needs* to contact me privately, I elected to make it difficult for anyone to email me unsolicited. Somewhere around a decade of previous experience with mailing lists had showed that there are annoying problems when you give away an email address in public. >> And you'd have to be newcomer to MAILING LISTS > I no doubt am, but I can't still see what advantage tegre is to divulge > the email address. In general, this is how mailing lists work. If you don't like that, you take steps against it (e.g. such as I've outlined), or you use a different forum. Personally, I hate web forums. They're tediously slow to use, convoluted, and I'd have to browse dozens of different websites to manage all the different forums I participate in. > But, once again, if divulging email addresses is not a way to stop spam, > why has this modus operandi that seems to frustrate some people been > adopted. Because "that's the way lists work"? It's how *emailing* works... Nothing's perfect, everything has things for and against it. For many people the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. >> Sign up twice to the Fedora list, with two different e-mail addresses. >> >> [The first one deletes anything it receives, the second doesn't] > The problem with this if that spammers can use your first address. No, they can't... In the sense that they can't spam me, because the mail server handling that address deletes ALL mail it receives, unless it has a special codeword in the subject line. So any spam they do attempt to send, is a completely wasted effort. It's deleted on the server, it never comes near me. On the other hand, spammers can use any address in their "from" address, forging the sender details. But they can do that with any address, or just make up completely bogus ones. > Sorry for this, and for sometimes being impatient. But, having not been > given any indication to the contrary, I still think that it would be much > better if only usernames were used. But now, thanks to your explanations I > can manage the situation. I see your point, and I've also felt similarly about mailing lists. But, there's advantages in being able to directly contact people. On another smaller list, where many of us know each other, it's not uncommon to privately email each other about something, and nobody gets upset about it. But on bigger lists I've found that private mail is more likely to come from someone with their nose out of joint; and hiding behind some false sort of anonymity, they can get really nasty. Another thing I have against private messages on a technical list is that some people will reply with an answer to a problem, but only to the poster. Nobody else on the list gets to see the solution, or even know if there is one. I'd see that all the time with some forums, where you'd do a google search for a problem you had, and see page after page of people asking the same question, and the only answer was "private reply sent." That, and, "you must subscribe to read more." For all these sorts of things, and others, are some of the reasons I preferred news groups to mailing lists (no email address necessary, replies to the group, you only had to fetch a low-bandwidth list of messages and the particular messages that you wanted to read, and good news clients tended to have much better management features than most mail clients). I'm less than thrilled about one thing the gmane news group does when it replies back to this list: It sets the follow up to address to its own news server. This *list* is the Fedora list, nobody else should subvert replies to somewhere else, they should remove that header before feeding back to the mailing list. And since I don't have that news server in my mail/news client, replies need manual fiddling with before they'll post. > You know, many people here are very helpful and come come up with tips > that are really handy but, when you got something right, you've got a gift > for making it clear. It's a former teacher, journalist, translator, who's > telling you this. You could make a rock learn. I used to work in schools (primary, secondary, and special). > If I ever end up using Fedora properly, I suppose any half-brained Windows > user will be able too. If you can learn to jump through the hoops (dowsed in petrol and set on fire) that Windows makes you do to use their screwed up system, then you can definitely manage to learn how to use a computer system that actually works properly. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686 Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
