Re: [Geiser-users] Can you de-obfuscate the list email address, please?

[Reuben Thomas]

On 9 April 2013 00:16, Jose A. Ortega Ruiz <address@hidden> wrote:

Well, i guess you won't be surprised to know that i kind of like it that
way.  That makes a tally of 1-1... if there're more votes against it
from readers of the list than in favour of it, proving your suspicions
true, i'll be happy to oblige :)

I'm not sure whether anyone ever wrote to me complaining that I'd obfuscated an address, but I stopped doing it a long time ago.

However, I do know that I provide a lot more feedback than most: it's rare I seriously investigate any software project without writing to the author to thank them for the program, or correct a typo, or make a suggestion or report a bug. I am quite determined in doing this, so I'll quite often spend several minutes searching for a contact address, mailing list, forum, or whatever.

I therefore conclude that plenty of less determined (less confident, busier) users simply don't write to projects whose contact details they have to hunt down, retype, or whatever.

In other words, an obfuscated address wastes your users' time, and loses you contributions. I don't believe that in most cases this loss is outweighed by any gain due to decreased spam.

(If you or anyone else thinks they don't mind this sort of obfuscation, consider how much it costs you personally. Then consider how much human labor is lost to pointlessly de-obfuscating email addresses, duplicated work because of missed bug reports, and other lack of human connection. Then wonder whether it's really worth it.)

I promise that from now on I'll be writing about geiser proper!

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