[Pythoncard-users] PythonCard list archive available via Newsreader interface

[<bra...@om...>]

Tonight I found myself frustrated with the web-based interfaces for 
reading mailing lists. I wanted to dig deep into the PythonCard mailing 
list, and found the web interfaces just too clunky. Then I noticed 
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pythoncard, helpfully linked from 
the main PythonCard documentation page. Apparently not all mail archives 
are created equal. The Gmane web interface seemed pretty good. Not as good 
as a real mail application like Eudora, but fairly well thought out.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the home page for Gmane, and was happy 
to discover that all Gmain mailing list archive have been converted to 
Usenet newsgroup format at news.gmane.org. With a good newsreader app, the 
user interface is much more convenient than a web interface (quicker 
navigation, less clicking around from screen to screen, ability to read 
multiple postings in one screen, etc.). I popped open my newsreader app, 
pointed it to news.gmane.org, and...voila! A clean, convenient UI for 
interacting with mailing list archives.  This is a very cool service 
offered free by Gmane.org. 

If you already know all this, then I'll feel a bit stupid for pointing out 
something that seems nifty, surprising, and clever to me, but just obvious 
to everyone else.

Oops, I just realized that it's only a matter of time before the spamming 
spammers realize they can point their spam crawlers at news.gmane.org, 
exposing all our email addresses to the ravages of spam spam spam.

Except...the big brains of Gmane thought of that, too. They have an email 
address encryption scheme available to solve this problem.  The mailing 
list admin can request that this feature be enabled for the entire mailing 
list. See  http://gmane.org/tmda.php . Of course, this won't affect the 
security of other mailing list archives, but most of them are web-based 
and do not expose email addresses, so...it looks like a good idea to 
request the feature.

* This ad not paid for by Gmane: In the interests of full disclosure, I am 
fully not paid by Gmane to provide any kind of endorsements, just as they 
are fully not paid by me or anyone else that I know of to provide any kind 
of amazingly nifty mail archive service.