FC: Politech back from hiatus, and important list news

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I'm back from five weeks of what seemed like non-stop travel and I'll start 
going through the backlog of Politech submissions soon.

Keep reading if you're interested in some significant changes I'm planning 
for the list over the next few weeks.

First, I'm moving the list and the web site from Rackspace to Rackshack -- 
the company has a similar name but will give me a faster server for a 
better price than Rackspace offers. What that means is Politech messages 
should be delivered more quickly. If you'd like to donate to support the 
hosting, I'd encourage you to do so here 
(http://www.politechbot.com/donate/). If you have donated and I haven't 
listed you as a contributor, please let me know and I'll fix my error.

Second, I'm thinking of merging Politech with a blog utility such as 
Movable Type, primarily to take advantage of RSS. One option would be to 
keep the Politech home page the way it is but install Movable Type at a 
second URL. That would let me auto-insert new list messages into Movable 
Type's MySQL database and take advantage of its RSS capabilities. It would 
also let me add additional posts to the web site that would not appear on 
the mailing list, and enable comments from readers -- which would be a 
serious change from the way Politech has worked to date. Alternatively, I 
could use the RSSify utility or use Movable Type for a redesigned Politech 
home page. Newsisfree.com currently makes a Politech RSS feed available 
here (http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/rss/591/) but the terms are 
annoying. Suggestions?

Third, I'm thinking of shifting Politech from majordomo (the software I've 
used to run Politech since 1995 or 1996) to mailman. Both are open-source 
utilities used for mailing lists, but mailman has the advantages of more 
active development, a digest mode, and modern upgrades like being able to 
set a vacation option. The downside is that it introduces another level of 
complexity because it sets a password for each list subscriber. Also, 
majordomo may be old but it is fast enough and it works just fine. Any 
thoughts?

Fourth, I'd like to include a better search engine for the Politech 
archives. It's been three years since I looked at the state of the art of 
search utilities, so I'm open to recommendations for a fast utility that 
can build a date- and relevance-sorted index. When I last looked and did 
some performance tests, the leaders were glimpse for date and Isearch for 
relevance. Suggestions? The list archives are around 60 MB, not counting 
the /docs directory.

Fifth, I have to figure out how to spam-proof the archives. Thanks to those 
folks who responded a month or two ago (including Earl Hood, the estimable 
author of mhonarc, which is the utility that builds the Politech web site). 
A newer version of mhonarc includes email address obfuscation, and I can 
write a Perl script to obfuscate the rest.

Sixth, because of the deadly combination of spam and viral spam, I'm not 
sure how long I'll be able to keep the declan () well com address. I estimate 
I've received over 10,000 spam/viral spam messages in the last month. I 
dislike challenge-response utilities for the reasons we've discussed here 
before, but without them my inbox may become unusable. For now I've 
resorted to quadruply-filtering incoming mail using SpamAssassin, Eudora 
6.0 paid mode's spamfiltering, Norton Antivirus, and a fat collection of 
filters. One alternative would be to use a disposable email address each 
month for Politech, such as disposable-sep03 () politechbot com and gradually 
retire declan () well com, or move to a web form for list submissions -- but 
those are last resorts. For now, do not send submissions to 
politech () politechbot com; the address is not spam-filtered, so I likely 
won't see them.

What I'm hoping to do is to make Politech a more useful and timely 
resource. I'd appreciate hearing any suggestions or preferences you have.

Thanks,
Declan




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