[2686] in WWW Security List Archive
Has Rutgers orphaned the www-security mailing list?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Prentiss Riddle)
Mon Aug 19 12:04:28 1996
From: Prentiss Riddle <riddle@is.rice.edu>
To: toad@Imperative.com (Todd Kaufmann), www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 09:12:11 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu, ns-www@www-ns.rutgers.edu,
bossert@hardees.rutgers.edu, drummond@hardees.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199608161328.JAA16710@tempest.imperative.com> from "Todd Kaufmann" at Aug 16, 96 09:28:24 am
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
> From owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu Fri Aug 16 12:42:04 1996
> From: Todd Kaufmann <toad@Imperative.com>
> To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
> Subject: losers .. Auto remail on a Web server??
> how do people get on this list?
>
> I concur with the earlier message: how did so many losers get on this
> list? They can't read the charter, they don't know how to use a
> mailing list, they probably can't read a book.
I agree that the mailing list is excessively noisy, with lots of
off-topic and/or redundant posts. But I don't think the subscribers
are the only source of the problem.
There is evidence to suggest that the WWW Security Team at Rutgers has
orphaned the list. The charter, in particular, is out of date (it says
that www-security is the discussion group for the IETF working group on
web security, but I'm told that that group has had its own separate
mailing list for some time now). I'm referring to the description of
the list at:
http://www-ns.rutgers.edu/www-security/index.html
http://www-ns.rutgers.edu/www-security/www-security-list.html
And there have been so many reports of problems unsubscribing from the
www-security list that it's hard for me to believe they are all due to
user error.
Furthermore, it's not clear that anyone currently employed at Rutgers
"owns" the list. The owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu address
evaluates to a single individual with a non-Rutgers forwarding address,
Simon Cooper at sc@corp.sgi.com. Cooper's personal web page
(http://www-ns.rutgers.edu/~scooper/scooper.html), like the Rutgers WWW
Security pages, hasn't been updated since mid to late 1995. If Simon
Cooper is reading this, it would be reassuring to hear from him. The
other listed members of the Rutgers WWW Security Team, Greg Bossert and
Walt Drummond, also have non-Rutgers forwarding addresses.
Even with all of its problems, the www-security mailing list is an
extremely important forum. I wish that someone from Rutgers would show
an interest in this list again by updating and publicizing the charter
and by testing the unsubscription mechanism. Active participation in the
list, encouraging on-topic threads and discouraging off-topic ones,
would be even better.
If Rutgers no longer has staff to manage this list properly, I think it
should be moved to another institution which does.
-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle@rice.edu
-- RiceInfo Administrator, Rice University / http://is.rice.edu/~riddle
-- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.
