jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
$ GET http://lists.wikimedia.org/robots.txt |sed 's/^/>/'
# robots.txt for lists.wikimedia.org # # Disabled crawling for several lists 2005-11-26 to # discourage people from complaining about items they # post on public mailing lists being the first Google # search result about them.
Tell them to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive next time. Then there would be no need to make all the other people's posts unsearchable too, and it will even work on all the other sites the lists are archived, e.g., gmane.org.
The issue isn't people who never want their posts to be archived. The issue is people who try to send offlist messages and accidentally copy them to the list. Or people who are talked about in a potentially libellous way. The people who are talked about sometimes complain so hard and loud that (maybe after a round or two of on-wiki mediation) we get the posters themselves pleading for their own messages to be removed, and asking clemency for their own poor judgement.
# Disabled for all lists 2006-11-03, now that an internal # search has been set up using htdig.
I can't find the URL for that.
That service was discontinued. But you can still use Gmane, MARC and Nabble.
# Note that list archives remain public.
Public but not searchable?!
It's a compromise. You should leave it alone.
-- Tim Starling