Problem is that it makes Google useless for searching the archives. 
Apple's mailing lists do something similar but less secure, and it 
neatly eliminates them as a useful repository of knowledge (Apple's own 
list archive and search UI being almost completely useless).

Chris

On Oct 21, 2003, at 2:43 PM, Greg Vaughn wrote:

> Ryan Dlugosz said:
> >My $.02 = Attempting to hide all the emails does more harm than 
> good...
> >it really only makes it harder for people to contact you who have a
> >genuine reason to do so (i.e. - with a Ruby question).
>
> I agree that email mangling causes as many problems as it solves, 
> however there's another possibility. I don't recall the name of the 
> approach, but I've seen systems where you're presented with a graphic 
> containing a word (and a mangled background to foil OCR) and you must 
> type it into a form in order to get access to a web system. The idea 
> is to ensure that it is a real person viewing the web archive rather 
> than a spammer's harvesting bot.
>
> Would something like that be an acceptable compromise? Who's in charge 
> of the web archive?
>
> -Greg Vaughn
>
>