On 1/27/2015 12:31 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:
> I still haven't figured out how to email someone without knowing their email
> address.

Reply to me!

On 1/27/2015 12:44 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 1/27/15 12:42 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 1/27/15 12:31 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>>> I still haven't figured out how to email someone without knowing their
>>> email address.
>>
>> http://goo.gl/go5Dks -- Andrei
>
> I got destroyed - his "Send email to Walter Bright" button doesn't work... --
> Andrei

Apparently it works on Explorer and Firefox, does not on Chrome.

On Tuesday, 27 January 2015 at 20:31:57 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
> I still haven't figured out how to email someone without knowing their email address.  Could we get a developer to work on that? Maybe I'll file a bug report.
>
> Internet Bug: Unable to email someone without knowing their email address
>
> Silly internet, why didn't Al Gore think of this!

The web forum does not expose the email addresses users post with via a clickable link (so that evil spam robots don't harvest them). That doesn't mean that they're not available.

You can view the raw message source by getting a post's permalink, then replacing /post/ with /source/. The email address will be there.

> The web forum does not expose the email addresses users post with via a clickable link (so that evil spam robots don't harvest them). That doesn't mean that they're not available.
>
> You can view the raw message source by getting a post's permalink, then replacing /post/ with /source/. The email address will be there.

Very helpful thank you.

On Wednesday, 28 January 2015 at 00:20:08 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Tuesday, 27 January 2015 at 20:31:57 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>> I still haven't figured out how to email someone without knowing their email address.  Could we get a developer to work on that? Maybe I'll file a bug report.
>>
>> Internet Bug: Unable to email someone without knowing their email address
>>
>> Silly internet, why didn't Al Gore think of this!
>
> The web forum does not expose the email addresses users post with via a clickable link (so that evil spam robots don't harvest them). That doesn't mean that they're not available.
>
> You can view the raw message source by getting a post's permalink, then replacing /post/ with /source/. The email address will be there.

Just had a thought.  You could expose the email addresses only for users that are logged in.  That way the evil robots won't be able to steal the email addresses but real people can still access them easily.  However, maybe it is meant to be difficult by design? in which case nevermind :)

On Wednesday, 28 January 2015 at 04:17:12 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
> Just had a thought.  You could expose the email addresses only for users that are logged in.  That way the evil robots won't be able to steal the email addresses but real people can still access them easily.  However, maybe it is meant to be difficult by design? in which case nevermind :)

Registration on the forum is currently very simple because it grants no additional privileges. Half of the spam that we had was coming from registered accounts, so it's not likely to be a considerable deterrent.

I have thought about (and even implemented, but never enabled) adding a link which allows getting a user's email address after solving a CAPTCHA challenge.

I am hesitant to enable this, because:

- The reCAPTCHA MailHide API documentation has been quietly removed from Google's website.
- The email hiding feature on Google Code now no longer allows solving a CAPTCHA to get an email address.

Something tells me that in spam economics, a working email address is worth much more than the cost of solving a CAPTCHA.

Of course, in our case, it would be easy to harvest everyone's email from the NNTP server. But most spammers don't know that.

On Wednesday, 28 January 2015 at 21:12:58 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Wednesday, 28 January 2015 at 04:17:12 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>> Just had a thought.  You could expose the email addresses only for users that are logged in.  That way the evil robots won't be able to steal the email addresses but real people can still access them easily.  However, maybe it is meant to be difficult by design? in which case nevermind :)
>
> Registration on the forum is currently very simple because it grants no additional privileges. Half of the spam that we had was coming from registered accounts, so it's not likely to be a considerable deterrent.
>
> I have thought about (and even implemented, but never enabled) adding a link which allows getting a user's email address after solving a CAPTCHA challenge.
>
> I am hesitant to enable this, because:
>
> - The reCAPTCHA MailHide API documentation has been quietly removed from Google's website.
> - The email hiding feature on Google Code now no longer allows solving a CAPTCHA to get an email address.
>
> Something tells me that in spam economics, a working email address is worth much more than the cost of solving a CAPTCHA.
>
> Of course, in our case, it would be easy to harvest everyone's email from the NNTP server. But most spammers don't know that.

They may not have known before but now they do! lol :)  Robots are sniffing our sites with valid accounts! I was not expecting that...wow.  Writing a generic robot that can create accounts and login with them seems like a tough problem, I'm impressed.

On Wednesday, 28 January 2015 at 21:17:25 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
> They may not have known before but now they do! lol :)  Robots are sniffing our sites with valid accounts! I was not expecting that...wow.  Writing a generic robot that can create accounts and login with them seems like a tough problem, I'm impressed.

That's because they're not robots. The spam we had was coming from humans posting spamvertisements by hand.

On Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:17:24 +0000, Jonathan Marler wrote:

> They may not have known before but now they do! lol :)  Robots are sniffing our sites with valid accounts! I was not expecting that...wow. Writing a generic robot that can create accounts and login with them seems like a tough problem, I'm impressed.

this is the best universal robot created to date: human being. ;-)

On Wednesday, 28 January 2015 at 22:06:16 UTC, ketmar wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:17:24 +0000, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>

> this is the best universal robot created to date: human being. ;-)


quote attributed to a 1965 NASA report advocating manned space flight: "Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor."

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/where-human-workers-can-still-beat-robots-at-least-for-now/247259/