Re: [syndication] RSS errors due to template mistakes

["Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@ideaspace.net>]

> addresses.  What we ultimately implemented was the replacement of email
> addresses by images, which turned out to be easier and more CPU+space
> efficient than we originally presumed.

The only trouble here is being able to use them programmatically.  Given my
participation in Syndic8 you can imagine my interest in being able to use this
in a programmatic fashion.  I'd really like to let the system take care of
letting the feed owners know if something's amiss.

There'd need to be something either in the feed itself or in the web page at the
site URL used in the feed that contained the linking information.  Putting a
hash into the home page or feed would do it.  Then it'd be a simple matter to
have that hash cross-referenced on the server side.  Trouble is, without effort
on the part of the authors there's no way to get the ball rolling.

So it falls back to the question of what (and where) to ask the feed providers
to add to their content?  I'd prefer to avoid having them add anything
service-specific.  It's hard enough getting cooperation out of people without
making them think you're trying to "own" them.  If anything an MD5 hash of
whatever address they'd be willing to use would work.  They could hash it on
their own.  Anything that already knows their address could cross-reference it.
If the remote service already knows their address then the hash would match up.
The trick continues to be getting the users to start the ball rolling.

> We made our code available [1] under a BSD license so anyone can use it,
> and we even documented the process of setting up full harvest-proof
> hypermail archives. [2]

That's a nice bit of code.  I'd wonder, however, whether spammers would OCR
those pictures?  I suppose if they're willing to do to that much effort there's
not much more you can do.  I raise this question because many free mail sites
now use visually obfuscated signup screens precisely because of auto-signup bots
reading the images.  The arms race continues....

-Bill Kearney