[Veritas-bu] Question for the list members?

(Perhaps I should wait until I see what others think, but I'm on a plane and 
have a few minutes, so I thought I'd reply.)

I'm not sure if I'd call myself a "non-associated web forum".  
Backupcentral.com hosts the FAQ for this list and has for several years.  
There's also been a long-running association between myself and many other 
members on the list, including the list owner.  Finally, the mirroring was done 
with Doug's knowledge and blessing.

My reason for mirroring was to help strengthen the list, not to weaken it.  
Please read on.

First, good things:

1. It provides, IMHO, the best interface to an email archive that I've ever 
seen.  Try full text searches there vs any other mailing list archive and I 
think you'll be quite pleased.  ( http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2 ).  One 
really cool thing about the interface is that all posts with the same subject 
are threaded together in a single page.  Again, while this may sound similar to 
what you've seen before -- trust me it's not.

2. Since members of backupcentral.com can post to the forum via the web and 
have the posts go to the list, it provides another interface to the list -- 
especially for those who don't want to subscribe to a mailing list that can 
generate a hundred messages a day.  The more interfaces to this community we 
have, the better.  (I could have started my own forum and not connected to the 
list.  That splits the community, and I didn't want to do that.)

3. The popularity of backupcentral.com also increases the chance that someone 
using google will find the answer they're looking for without having to post a 
question.

4. Hopefully this now-tighter relationship between the list and backupcentral 
will encourage people to help us keep the FAQ more up to date, and that is a 
Good Thing.  For those who are curious, it's been converted into MediaWiki 
format to make it easier for everyone to update.  PLEASE come join the party 
and help us to update it.

As to potential concerns, I can think of a few, and I believe we've addressed 
them.

1. You'll notice that when a message is imported, the poster is listed as 
"Firstname Lastname," not his/her email address.  This was done with security 
in mind.  I have no desire to give anyone another place to access to your email 
addresses.  I'd say that my interface is much less of a threat to your online 
identity than the "real" mailing list archive.

2. "Non-member" posts.  Although we tried a number of different methods, we 
were forced to have posts from the forum show up as a generic email address on 
the list.  The person is free to have a signature or identify themselves in 
some other way, but the email address will be anonymized on the list.  BUT in 
order to do that, they'll have to have a backupcentral user ID.  If someone 
ever abused the anonymity, you can figure out who they are in a second by going 
to the forum.  If necessary, I can then ban that user from backupcentral.


---
W. Curtis Preston
Author of O'Reilly's Backup & Recovery and Using SANs and NAS
VP Data Protection
GlassHouse Technologies


-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces 
at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Keating
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:59 PM
To: VERITAS-BU at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Question for the list members?

How do other's (admin?) feel about the list being mirrored on a
non-associated web forum??

Paul
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