[Chicago] sorry if this was already discussed... but why does the archive require a password (& only available to list members)?

[skip at pobox.com]

    Jason> With the archive now "locked" way from public access:
    ...
    Jason> Was there a decision to "go private"... If so, why? 

    Jason> If the issue is preventing people (or bots) from harvesting
    Jason> addresses, there's gotta be a better way to do this...

We (the moderators) received an email message from a woman who had briefly
participated in the list using her private email address.  Outside the
software community she is active in immigrant rights issues and uses a
"throwaway" address for that work.  Rightly or wrongly, she was worried that
people wanting to harass her for her immigration writes work could reach her
more easily through her private email address.  She wrote to the moderators
and asked that her private email address be purged from the archives.  As a
first step, the archives were password protected.  We have yet to contact
the python.org folks to see if the emails can be removed or sanitized and
the archives rebuilt.  Frankly, once the original request fell off my radar
screen I forgot about it.

My apologies for the inconvenience to the list.  We'll try to get the issue
resolved soon.

-- 
Skip Montanaro - skip at pobox.com - http://www.mojam.com/
"In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears.  In America today, Britney
Spears is Britney Spears - and that is our problem."  Thomas L. Friedman in
"The World is Flat"