Hello, This point is highly controversial within the Arch community, I have seen a lot of people argue either side, but I want to share my opinion on this. Personally I think obfuscation of emails is a complete waste of time, and I am going to explain why. So lets take my email as an example, polarian@polarian.dev, people often always obfuscate in the same way: <polarian at polarian dot dev> now what stops a bot from substituting "at" with "@" and "dot" with ".", it is not hard to do, and quite frankly it is a pain to deobfuscate peoples emails within PKGBUILD files when you need to email them to report issues, or get into contact. I have read a lot of pages on the ArchWiki and they all promote obfuscation of emails, have seen discussions on discussing the pros and cons, and not saying obfuscation has no downsides, but none of the discussions amounted to anything. Can we please stop advertising obfuscation of emails, it is counter-productive, we have anti-spam measures, and bots can easily bypass the obfuscation unless you make it more sophisticated, but at that point people won't be able to understand the email and you will be uncontactable. All obfuscation does in my experience, is make it 100x harder for people to report issues, its counter productive in a lot of cases but yet Arch community still advertises. It is up to you personally if you want to obfuscate your email address in PKGBUILDs and other files, but PLEASE can we stop advertising it as a perfect solution to spam, because in many cases, it doesn't even protect you from spam, just is a hindrance for people who genuinely want to contact you. Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On 10/01/23 at 11:03pm, Polarian wrote:
Personally I think obfuscation of emails is a complete waste of time, and I am going to explain why.
So lets take my email as an example, polarian@polarian.dev, people often always obfuscate in the same way:
<polarian at polarian dot dev>
now what stops a bot from substituting "at" with "@" and "dot" with ".", it is not hard to do, and quite frankly it is a pain to deobfuscate peoples emails within PKGBUILD files when you need to email them to report issues, or get into contact.
If it is simple enough for a bot/script to do it, where is the hurdle for a human? It's pretty evident to me how to parse that as a valid email address, and no real effort to type it into a mail to: form.
I have read a lot of pages on the ArchWiki and they all promote obfuscation of emails, have seen discussions on discussing the pros and cons, and not saying obfuscation has no downsides, but none of the discussions amounted to anything.
Can we please stop advertising obfuscation of emails, it is counter-productive, we have anti-spam measures, and bots can easily bypass the obfuscation unless you make it more sophisticated, but at that point people won't be able to understand the email and you will be uncontactable.
All obfuscation does in my experience, is make it 100x harder for people to report issues, its counter productive in a lot of cases but yet Arch community still advertises.
100x harder? How? Because it isn't a clickable mailto link? Please give Arch users *some* credit. We aren't imbeciles; we can work out how to email a maintainer whether their address is obfuscated or not.
And it you are going to keep emailing these lists, please learn how to quote replies so the context remains in the thread. That is a practice that actually does make interacting with the community less burdensome. -- // jwr
Hello, The fact I have to read and think of how to structure the email address instead of copying and pasting is the issue for me, its a big deterrent, when I want to shoot someone a quick email giving them a heads up, I don't want to have to decypher their email address from the PKGBUILD because they obfuscated it, but this is my personal opinion, I know others share this opinion but I do not know how many :/
100x harder? How? Because it isn't a clickable mailto link? Please give Arch users *some* credit
No thanks, also it does not have to be a clickable mailto link but there has been many times (especially for those with german names... sorry, your names are so different from a English point of view) where I have mistyped the name in the email and the next day got a undelivered mail notification that the mail was not delivered. Humans make mistakes, in no way am I saying Arch Linux users are stupid, I am saying why not cut out the additional overhead and just make it 100x easier?
And it you are going to keep emailing these lists, please learn how to quote replies so the context remains in the thread. That is a practice that actually does make interacting with the community less burdensome.
I use text-only emails, unlike most people I dislike using html emails, it adds so much complexity, I love the simplicity of plain text emails. Yes I can quote like I have in this email, but I sometimes get lazy and can't be bothered, especially if it is only a small reply which is not complex. Furthermore I kindly ask for you to treat me with a little more respect, you have made two unjustified allegations within your email, firstly accusing me of implying that Arch Linux users are "imbeciles", and now you are dictating how I should and shouldn't structure my emails. If we are going to play the elitism card like you have in your email, look at your email address with your fancy "@gmail.com" and look at mine, just like how we all speak differently, we all structure our emails differently, I get the point you are making but it was VERY passive aggressive, so kindly stop! Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Also, As a sidenote I have figured out how to correctly quote, turns out email clients handle it differently :/ Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On 11.01.23 00:35, Polarian wrote:
Hello,
The fact I have to read and think of how to structure the email address instead of copying and pasting is the issue for me, its a big deterrent,
This means it is working as intended -coderobe
Hello, On 11/01/2023 08:08, Christian Rebischke wrote:
To be fair: I am not obfuscating my mail in pkgbuilds for years now and I don't get more or less spam than other devs/TUs, at least I think so.
So why does the ArchWiki continue to advertise the obfuscation of emails, all it is doing is making it more difficult to contact PKGBUILD maintainers. If it does not make a noticeable difference, then why bother? Thanks -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hello,
This means it is working as intended
So you are saying not receiving emails from human beings is what it is intended to do? Then why do you put your email there in the first place. Obfuscation is supposed to prevent bots spamming you, not to prevent people from contacting you for support! -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Tue, 2023-01-10 at 23:35 +0000, Polarian wrote:
especially for those with german names... sorry, your names are so different from a English point of view
Hi, I only want to let you know, what I do to avoid typos. Instead of typing I copy and paste a ralf-mardorf AT riseup DOT net alike address and then only replace " AT " and " DOT ". Once again, I usually don't type the complete address, but just replace the " AT " and " DOT ". Regards, Ralf PS: IMO it's an unimportant topic. I suspect that it doesn't make a difference, if somebody does or doesn't replace the @-Sign and dot. OTOH when I was young and tuned my small moped, doing one or the other little single thing to the machine didn't made a difference, but the amount of little different things made a big difference.
Hello, This is actually a good idea, why did I never think of copying it part by part instead of typing it out, guess I am a cetified idiot now. Thanks for the idea, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Wed, 2023-01-11 at 23:44 +0000, Polarian wrote:
why did I never think of copying it part by part instead of typing it out
Very likely because we are used to email addresses being displayed by a jpeg so we need the full route by resizing the email editor window, clicking window layer always on top, moving the windows above the browser window and then, when we are already annoyed, laboriously type in the address, three or four times, to correct typos.
On Thu, 2023-01-12 at 06:00 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Wed, 2023-01-11 at 23:44 +0000, Polarian wrote:
why did I never think of copying it part by part instead of typing it out
Very likely because we are used to email addresses being displayed by a jpeg so we need the full route by resizing the email editor window, clicking window layer always on top, moving the windows above the browser window and then, when we are already annoyed, laboriously type in the address, three or four times, to correct typos.
Oops, clicking window layer always on top is only needed, if it's vice versa, if the resized browser window is above the email editor window :D.
El mié, 11 ene 2023 a las 0:04, Polarian (<polarian@polarian.dev>) escribió:
Hello,
Hi!
This [....] contact you.
After reading your comments I took a look around the AUR to really see how much people "obfuscate" their mailing address. What I found was varied, but I would venture to say that 90% of people put their email address as is, without obfuscation. Whether or not to use this kind of obfuscation is a complicated issue, I personally consider that it is not worth much to avoid spam (nowadays), at least not using at and dot, but it is too deep in the collective mind to try to avoid it. I can also understand that there are people who feel safer using this method since it at least avoids the representation of the email as a clickable link in many viewers, which at least ensures that if someone wants to contact you they do not do it on impulse but something slightly more meditated. In any case, seeing that this obfuscation thing is a problem for you, you can use this simple bash, zsh and derivatives snippet: ``` deofuscator () { # Pick all arguments as one string args="$@" # Remove everything before < mail="${args#*<}" # Remove everything after > mail="${mail%>*}" # Replacements # (at) -> @ mail="${mail//(at)/@}" # (dot) -> . mail="${mail//(dot)/.}" # at -> @ mail="${mail// at /@}" # dot -> . mail="${mail// dot /.}" # Remove remaining spaces an echo mail echo "${mail//[[:space:]]/}" } ``` Just paste the code into any console or if you want it to work you can always put it in your .bashrc. Using it is as easy as doing: $ deofuscator "# Maintainer: Polarian <polarian at polarian dot dev>" polarian@polarian.dev Or with a PKGBUILD: $ deofuscator $(head -1 PKGBUILD) Greetings -- Óscar García Amor | ogarcia at moire.org | http://ogarcia.me
Hello, Nice script, however I feel it is a little overkill. I do not mind deobfuscating emails every now and again, but its the fact that the ArchWiki continues to recommend obfuscation of emails, without ever describing why it could be good or bad. You can see this in: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AUR_submission_guidelines Quoting from this page:
Remember to disguise your email to protect against spam I a while back added a small statement to try to counteract this, in response to a discussion:
Be aware this will make it more difficult for actual users to email you, so obfuscate like shown below only if necessary.
The issue is the majority of cases it is not necessary, and thus this line is pretty redundant. You can't stop people obfuscating their emails if it makes them feel safer from spam, but can we at least stop advertising it falsely as the one solution to end all spam emails? Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hey, On 11/01/2023 00:03, Polarian wrote:
Hello,
This point is highly controversial within the Arch community, I have seen a lot of people argue either side, but I want to share my opinion on this.
snip
Note that the Maintainer take can be out of date, and I myself rely on archweb so https://archlinux.org to get accurate packager information. When I adopt packages I don't update the Maintainer entry in the PKGBUILD.
Hello,
Note that the Maintainer take can be out of date, and I myself rely on archweb so https://archlinux.org to get accurate packager information.
When I adopt packages I don't update the Maintainer entry in the PKGBUILD.
No offense, but this is very bad. Not all AUR users publicly provide their email address, and thus the PKGBUILD is probably the most important part to ensure that you are contactable. It is also important to know who maintains a PKGBUILD, not everyone uses the AUR web frontend. Within the AUR submission guidelines it specifically states to maintain the Maintainer and Co-Maintainer comments at the top of the PKGBUILD. It literally takes 5 seconds to change it, personally the PKGBUILD is the first place I go to find who to contact if I find an issue. Please abide by the AUR submission guidelines, we have them for a reason :) Thanks -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hey, On 11/01/2023 10:31, Polarian wrote:
Hello,
Note that the Maintainer take can be out of date, and I myself rely on archweb so https://archlinux.org to get accurate packager information.
When I adopt packages I don't update the Maintainer entry in the PKGBUILD.
No offense, but this is very bad. Not all AUR users publicly provide their email address, and thus the PKGBUILD is probably the most important part to ensure that you are contactable.
I would appreciate it if you didn't jump to conclusions. My comment is about official repository packages not the AUR. As for the AUR my opinion would be that the AUR website would also be the best goto for finding contact information or even better write a comment. Greetings, Jelle
El mié, 11 ene 2023 a las 10:26, Jelle van der Waa (<jelle@vdwaa.nl>) escribió:
[..] Note that the Maintainer take can be out of date, and I myself rely on archweb so https://archlinux.org to get accurate packager information. [..]
That is the point. To really know the identity of the current maintainer for certain, it is best to go to the Arch Linux website and check there who is (or are) in charge of the package in question. Also, many package maintainers (myself among them) prefer to use ticketing systems (or AUR comments) to keep track of a problem (or improvement) in a package rather than email and that usually appears as a note posted in the AUR itself. The reason for doing this is to make those comments public, so that if another user has the same error they can know what it is due to and how to fix it. IMHO, email should always be the last option for contacting a package maintainer and only be used when all other methods fail. Greetings. -- Óscar García Amor | ogarcia at moire.org | http://ogarcia.me
On 1/10/23 17:03, Polarian wrote:
Personally I think obfuscation of emails is a complete waste of time, and I am going to explain why.
+1 -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Ah, so there are people who agree with me... -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
I also agree On Sat, Jan 14, 2023, 8:19 AM Polarian <polarian@polarian.dev> wrote:
Ah, so there are people who agree with me... -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
I agree completely Obfuscation of E-Mails can be a nightmare for accessibility, especially regarding Neurodivergent people such as myself, people suffering from dyslexia, etc. If there really is no extra benefit to obfuscating the E-Mails, and it only alienates groups that are already alienated enough - there is no reason to keep doing it While it may be a standard everyone is used to, standards can change, and when it comes to situations like this I'm of the belief that they should--- Michal S. Project Lead @ Crystal Linux 10 Jan 2023, 23:03 by polarian@polarian.dev:
Hello,
This point is highly controversial within the Arch community, I have seen a lot of people argue either side, but I want to share my opinion on this.
Personally I think obfuscation of emails is a complete waste of time, and I am going to explain why.
So lets take my email as an example, polarian@polarian.dev, people often always obfuscate in the same way:
<polarian at polarian dot dev>
now what stops a bot from substituting "at" with "@" and "dot" with ".", it is not hard to do, and quite frankly it is a pain to deobfuscate peoples emails within PKGBUILD files when you need to email them to report issues, or get into contact.
I have read a lot of pages on the ArchWiki and they all promote obfuscation of emails, have seen discussions on discussing the pros and cons, and not saying obfuscation has no downsides, but none of the discussions amounted to anything.
Can we please stop advertising obfuscation of emails, it is counter-productive, we have anti-spam measures, and bots can easily bypass the obfuscation unless you make it more sophisticated, but at that point people won't be able to understand the email and you will be uncontactable.
All obfuscation does in my experience, is make it 100x harder for people to report issues, its counter productive in a lot of cases but yet Arch community still advertises.
It is up to you personally if you want to obfuscate your email address in PKGBUILDs and other files, but PLEASE can we stop advertising it as a perfect solution to spam, because in many cases, it doesn't even protect you from spam, just is a hindrance for people who genuinely want to contact you.
Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
I'd put money on almost everybody agreeing that it's not the best solution, but feels its very pedantic. Not sure many people even see the advice. And devs are typically busy not finishing their side projects to notice an obscure piece of outdated advice. All for change though, hooray let's go! Ngā mihi, Aiden -- *Aiden Langley* Kaipūkaha Rorohiko | Software Engineer
Hello, Unfortunately you will need to give me that money you have bet, its about a 50/50 split, this conversation has been brought up many times, and a lot of people still advocate for obfuscation of emails. As for "obscure" it is plastered all over the ArchWiki guides, any AUR package maintainer would have read the statement about remembering to always obfuscate your email to prevent spam. Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 01:54 +0000, Polarian wrote:
As for "obscure" it is plastered all over the ArchWiki guides, any AUR package maintainer would have read the statement about remembering to always obfuscate your email to prevent spam.
It's not that unlikely that for a bot polarian at polarian dot dev are just words within a sentence, the email address might be not noticeable, while polarian@polarian.dev without doubts is an email address within a sentence. It's probably not only about replacing an "at" and some "dot"s and spaces. A bot can easily replace the "at" and some "dot"s and spaces, but for a bot it might be hard to detect the obfuscated email address. A bot isn't neurodivergent, but a complete idiot.
Hello, You do realise that people use <> to denote email addresses, it is pretty simple for a bot to detect the format, because we use conventions. Humans can be just as dumb as bots, if you obfuscate a email too well human beings will not understand, I struggle enough de-obfuscating emails as it is, and you are suggesting to make it worse? Obfuscation in practice is often used to prevent human beings from understanding, but not bots. For example proprietary developers obfuscate code, a bot can easily decypher the code, a human? not so much. Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 03:32 +0000, Polarian wrote:
You do realise that people use <> to denote email addresses
Oops, that's a good point!
Honestly, I've never seen any obfuscated emails in the AUR. The people I know that obfuscate usually throw a bunch of random characters in to stop spam bots. It's really not that hard to copy, paste, and remove a few characters. Might be more of a nuisance with a disability. It just sounds like it takes more operations to edit the text. On Sat, Jan 14, 2023, 10:01 PM Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> wrote:
On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 03:32 +0000, Polarian wrote:
You do realise that people use <> to denote email addresses
Oops, that's a good point!
El dom, 15 ene 2023 a las 6:10, mike lojkovic (<mikelojkovic@gmail.com>) escribió:
Honestly, I've never seen any obfuscated emails in the AUR.
There are some, but the truth is that they are in the minority. As I said in my previous post, if you really have difficulties deobfuscating the email address, the best thing to do is to use the snippet that I propose. You put it as it is in your .bashrc or in your .zshrc and it works perfectly. Anyway what I would recommend to all the people who don't feel comfortable writing their email address without obfuscation is that instead of using the obfuscated address they should put a URL where they can be contacted. That is, instead of this: Maintainer: Oscar Garcia Amor <ogarcia at moire dot org> or Maintainer: Oscar Garcia Amor <ogarcia (at) moire (dot) org> Put this: Maintainer: Oscar Garcia Amor (https://github.com/ogarcia/pkgbuilds/issues) It doesn't have to be a GitHub address, it's just an example. But IMHO the best way to handle a contact derived from a PKGBUILD is through a ticketing system. Greetings. -- Óscar García Amor | ogarcia at moire.org | http://ogarcia.me
Hello, On 15/01/2023 09:16, Óscar García Amor wrote:
There are some, but the truth is that they are in the minority.
Wow I do not know what AUR packages you look at, but all the AUR packages I have contributed to have had obfuscated email addresses, mainly by smaller AUR packagers, BECAUSE THE GUIDE SPECIFICALLY TELLS YOU THAT OBFUSCATION OF EMAILS IS A REQUIREMENT!!!
As I said in my previous post, if you really have difficulties deobfuscating the email address, the best thing to do is to use the snippet that I propose. You put it as it is in your .bashrc or in your .zshrc and it works perfectly.
Surely the fact that you can write a script to convert the obfuscated email to the de-obfuscated email address surely means a bot could do it too, thus making it futile at preventing spam!
Anyway what I would recommend to all the people who don't feel comfortable writing their email address without obfuscation is that instead of using the obfuscated address they should put a URL where they can be contacted. That is, instead of this: Maintainer: Oscar Garcia Amor <ogarcia at moire dot org> or Maintainer: Oscar Garcia Amor <ogarcia (at) moire (dot) org> Put this: Maintainer: Oscar Garcia Amor (https://github.com/ogarcia/pkgbuilds/issues)
This will get your package removed, as it violates the AUR packaging guidelines, it specifically states it must be an email address, however I do not see why it could not be any other source of contact, would be cool if we could use different brackets for different forms of communication like: <> - email [] - IRC () - XMPP {} - Matrix Would be really cool to be able to specify different ways of communication, although as for the IRC option, AUR profiles already allow you to display your IRC nick, so that might be redundant, but it is only a suggestion. Unless the guidelines are updated, and the administrators agree, this conversation is a waste of time. Arch Linux is a community and thus if there are people who do not agree with updating the guidelines to make it more neurodivergent-friendly (personally autism doesn't make it any harder, so I am fine there, but seriously, it must be painful for dyslexics or other disabilities). I thought Arch Linux was meant to be inclusive for all, if so... surely this should be changed to help the community. As what Oscar recommended, it might be a good idea to allow people to put a URL to a git repository (as most PKGBUILD developers commit not only to the AUR but github/gitlab or another hosted instance) which means that they do not need to be contacted over email, and any issues with that specific package could be changed. Also there are services out their guys which provide randomly generated emails which bounce the emails you get into your actual email address, if you get spammed you simply disable the randomly generated email address and all emails will be bounced from that specific source. Although these companies are proprietary, and have privacy concerns, this is also an option. Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hi Polarian,
BECAUSE THE GUIDE SPECIFICALLY TELLS YOU THAT OBFUSCATION OF EMAILS IS A REQUIREMENT!!!
- Please don't shout. - Please post less; you don't have to rebut every email you disagree with if you've already got across the same point elsewhere. - Please quote something pertinent when replying otherwise a reply can have no context and just looks like a repeat. -- Thanks, Ralph.
Hello,
- Please don't shout.
It was not meant to be a shout, because I use text-only emails I can not use bold, so the only thing I can do is change the characters to become bigger, aka press caps lock. And no I will not switch to html emails, I will rigidly remain to text-only emails, because I am a pain like that :P
- Please post less; you don't have to rebut every email you disagree with if you've already got across the same point elsewhere.
I do not see what is wrong with posting responses, can I highlight that I do not post 24/7, I check my emails in the morning when I get up and send off a ton of responses, which is what is happening right now, then I will disappear for the rest of the day most likely. Plus this is an issue I brought up and thus I want to contribute a lot in, if it was not relevant to me I would not be posting here, and last time I checked there is no rule stating when and when I can't post.
- Please quote something pertinent when replying otherwise a reply can have no context and just looks like a repeat.
I only quote when I see that I need to provide context, if I do not need to provide context then what am I meant to quote? Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Oh... I just checked the archives and well, see attachments... I see what you mean now, I am not only the top poster, but by over double the emails... Sorry, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Sat, 2023-01-14 at 23:09 -0600, mike lojkovic wrote:
Honestly, I've never seen any obfuscated emails in the AUR.
Hi, just a random example: "# Maintainer: DuckSoft <realducksoft at gmail dot com> # Co-Maintainer: Mark Wagie <mark dot wagie at tutanota dot com> # Contributor: KokaKiwi <kokakiwi+aur@kokakiwi.net>" - https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=ventoy-bin However, depending on the kind of issue, I usually add a comment or very rarely click "Submit Request" or I report an issue against upstream. Related to issues with packages from official repositories I either send a request to this mailing list, or I report an issue to https://bugs.archlinux.org/ (and/or upstream) or I ask at https://bbs.archlinux.org/ , for example, the coder/person who maintains ventoy upstream is subscribed as "longpanda" to the Arch forums and active, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1948154#p1948154 . Assuming that some obfuscated email addresses should annoy some neurodivergent users (e.g. individuals suffer from different symptoms of dyslexia), it still rarely makes sense to send an email to a {Co- ,}Maintainer or Contributor mentioned by the PKGBUILD. Regards, Ralf PS: I'm way more annoyed by CAPTCHAs. For example, pattern recognizion (AI) of self-driving cars is seemingly able to detect busses, hydrants or traffic lights. To prove that I'm a human being, I have to click on buses, hydrants or traffic lights in several hidden object game pictures, one after the other. This is outdated, long since overrun by technological progress. At best, we will be misused to train self- driving cars, but we don't prove that we are human.
Hello,
just a random example:
"# Maintainer: DuckSoft <realducksoft at gmail dot com> # Co-Maintainer: Mark Wagie <mark dot wagie at tutanota dot com> # Contributor: KokaKiwi <kokakiwi+aur@kokakiwi.net>" - https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=ventoy-bin
So if we go on the statistics within this one PKGBUILD 2/3 emails are obfuscated which means approximately 66.67% of people obfuscate, although this is not representative of the entire AUR, we would need a bigger data set. It does however highlight how easy it is to find a package with obfuscated email addresses, and the issue is the Maintainer and Co-Maintainer are the ones obfuscating their emails, they are the exact people you would want to email if there is an issue. also can I highlight how easy it is for a bot to de-obfuscate these emails: 1. replace all "dot" with . 2. replace all "at" with @ 3. remove all whitespace 3 steps, and your "spam protection" has been completely invalidated.
However, depending on the kind of issue, I usually add a comment or very rarely click "Submit Request" or I report an issue against upstream.
Unfortunately, the number of AUR packagers which actually reply to the comments in their packages are few, but there are some out there who make it a habit to always try to respond to people who are commenting on their package. The comment feature in AUR is less than ideal for conversations about issues though.
Related to issues with packages from official repositories I either send a request to this mailing list, or I report an issue to https://bugs.archlinux.org/ (and/or upstream) or I ask at https://bbs.archlinux.org/ , for example, the coder/person who maintains ventoy upstream is subscribed as "longpanda" to the Arch forums and active, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1948154#p1948154 .
Personally I just email the packager, I think a few of the TU's have seen my emails pop into their inbox asking when they are going to update a package within the community repository as it has been flagged out of date for over a month (little bit of a dick move, but I get worried if a package is not bumped after 1+ months as it commonly means the packager has lost interest in the package).
Assuming that some obfuscated email addresses should annoy some neurodivergent users (e.g. individuals suffer from different symptoms of dyslexia), it still rarely makes sense to send an email to a {Co- ,}Maintainer or Contributor mentioned by the PKGBUILD.
I disagree, email is more convenient to me, I rather discuss an issue over email than have to login to the bug tracker (in the case of official packages) or wait for an AUR packager to POSSIBLY reply or even read to my comment in the AUR, much rather just email, although I got a feeling a lot of people would not agree with this method of communication and state I am sending redundant or un-needed emails. Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hello, If you add random characters to an email address you no longer know what is the email address and obfuscation, sometimes email addresses are not always clear for example: foobar2001@gmail.com could be confused with obfuscation, and therefore make it even harder. We have spam lists, SPF/DKIM for a reason, although these do not stop targeted spam attacks from valid email addresses, every single one of our mailboxes have the ability to spam or trash emails based on a parameter. I do not see the need to obfuscate emails, cause most of the time it will not work! Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
Hello, On 14/01/2023 21:29, Michal S. wrote:
Obfuscation of E-Mails can be a nightmare for accessibility, especially regarding Neurodivergent people such as myself, people suffering from dyslexia, etc.
Sorry that you are dislexic, personally I have autism, I know how much it can suck to be a neurodivergent. The issue is, the people with power do not agree it is a big deal, and thus this will never be overturned. First step is to stop advertising obfuscation of emails within the ArchWiki guides, I know as soon as I change this myself an administrator will come past and revert the change. Any ArchWiki administrators reading this, if you agree with this, please get involved! Thanks for the support, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 01:29 +0000, Polarian wrote:
On 14/01/2023 21:29, Michal S. wrote:
Obfuscation of E-Mails can be a nightmare for accessibility, especially regarding Neurodivergent people such as myself, people suffering from dyslexia, etc.
I know how much it can suck to be a neurodivergent.
Hi, I'm a "desilxyc", too. However, if an obfuscated email address contains the word "dyslexic" I've got the choice, either to punch in 20 times 20 variations of "desilxyc" or either to copy and paste one time "dyslexic". If an obfuscated email address is a JPEG, then it can be a nightmare. If it's ASCII, then there's no reason to suffer, at least not for a dyslexic. Regards, Ralf
On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 03:23 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 01:29 +0000, Polarian wrote:
On 14/01/2023 21:29, Michal S. wrote:
Obfuscation of E-Mails can be a nightmare for accessibility, especially regarding Neurodivergent people such as myself, people suffering from dyslexia, etc.
I know how much it can suck to be a neurodivergent.
Hi,
I'm a "desilxyc", too. However, if an obfuscated email address contains the word "dyslexic" I've got the choice, either to punch in 20 times 20 variations of "desilxyc" or either to copy and paste one time "dyslexic". If an obfuscated email address is a JPEG, then it can be a nightmare. If it's ASCII, then there's no reason to suffer, at least not for a dyslexic.
Regards, Ralf
PS: It's similar for blind people without three hands. If they type with two hands, they can't do proofreading at the same time by the braille display. A dyslexic can't do proofreading because parts of a text easily can become just coloured bars and some characters are floating, changing their positions. OTOH there is no issue with "# Maintainer: Foo Bar <foo dot bar at mail dot com>" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ a series of so many short words is terribly difficult for me to read, but I don't need to read it and try to understand it like a sentence. I just need to copy and paste it and to find the parts that need a replacement, without the need to understand it like a sentence. At least for me it's not hard to find and replace "dot", "at" and " ".
People, This topic has now been discussed ad nauseam. So lets cap it off. There are no rules saying you have to obfuscate the email, and it is merely retained in the documentation as a tip people can follow if they wish to do so. "Remember to disguise your email to protect against spam. Additional or unneeded lines are facultative. Be aware this will make it more difficult for actual users to email you, so obfuscate like shown below only if necessary." https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AUR_submission_guidelines#Rules_of_submissi... AUR is never going to be moderated to retain any one format beyond the Maintainer/Contributor tag and that it should preferably be smiliar to "Some Name <some email>", How people insert this into the PKGBUILDs is for them to decide. Simple as that. -- Morten Linderud PGP: 9C02FF419FECBE16
Hello,
This topic has now been discussed ad nauseam. So lets cap it off.
There are no rules saying you have to obfuscate the email, and it is merely retained in the documentation as a tip people can follow if they wish to do so.
"Remember to disguise your email to protect against spam. Additional or unneeded lines are facultative. Be aware this will make it more difficult for actual users to email you, so obfuscate like shown below only if necessary."
AUR is never going to be moderated to retain any one format beyond the Maintainer/Contributor tag and that it should preferably be smiliar to "Some Name <some email>", How people insert this into the PKGBUILDs is for them to decide. You say this but you will start getting emails from people stating you are not following the AUR submission guidelines and you should review
This seems pretty much a rule to me, but that might be me taking this quote a little too seriously, and I have already discussed numerous times to remove this useless comment within the AUR submission guide, I managed to pass in a little edit without any complaints a while back to try to fight against obfuscation: "Be aware this will make it more difficult for actual users to email you, so obfuscate like shown below only if necessary." But I have realised this edit is futile, and I doubt anyone actually even read the fact that it makes it harder for the userbase. Like I have said in one of my emails on this topic, I strongly believe we shouldn't even reference obfuscation of emails in the submission guide, as currently it is quite clearly "officially recommended" by the AUR team, for something which does not even work replacing "." with "dot" and "@" with "at" is ineffective, and all it is going to do is confuse people. them OR they start asking you "Oh why did you not obfuscate your email address, do you want to be spammed?" Maybe I am being narrow minded, and not seeing the full picture here, but I do not see how subsituting characters for words makes a blind bit of difference for a bot, but it makes a huge difference for users which would like to email you for valid reasons. At the very least can we not make it seem like a "helpful tip" to obfuscate email addresses, I can write a full ArchWiki page on the pros and cons of obfuscation of emails, unfortunately they would be all cons and no pros to it. Also just because moderators will let it slide, I wonder if it would be a term of rejection from the TU application for "not following standard packaging guidelines", but you would have to tell me that because you are the administrator here. Thanks, -- Polarian GPG signature: 0770E5312238C760 Website: https://polarian.dev JID/XMPP: polarian@polarian.dev
participants (14)
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Aiden Langley
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Christian Rebischke
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David C. Rankin
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Jason Ryan
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Jelle van der Waa
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Mara Broda
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Matthew Blankenbeheler
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Michal S.
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mike lojkovic
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Morten Linderud
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Polarian
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Ralf Mardorf
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Ralph Corderoy
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Óscar García Amor