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

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

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.

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.

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

I also agree On Sat, Jan 14, 2023, 8:19 AM Polarian wrote:

Ah, so there are people who agree with me... -- 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

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.

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 () 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 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

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.

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

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 " - 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, 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 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 " ".

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