Anonymous Posting Returns

April 17, 2005 11:51 PM

Anon posting is back on for Ask Metafilter, including all the extended areas and categories and tags and whatnot. I think I tested everything out and it worked, but let me know if you find any bugs, as I'm sure I forgot one.
posted by mathowie (staff) to Feature Requests at 11:51 PM (13 comments total)

I totally just saw the testing in action. Wow. Amazing.
posted by stray at 11:53 PM on April 17, 2005

Totally off-topic, but have to take advantage of the fact that you're reading this, Matt...I've emailed you 3 times in the past 2 months (to haughey.com) to ask you something and you've never answered back. I know you have a spam blocker in place. I can be a ham, but I ain't no spam. So are you ignoring me, or not getting the emails?

(if I don't get an answer to this comment I guess I'll know which one it is)
posted by iconomy at 4:19 AM on April 18, 2005

That's the beauty of the spam blocker: you don't know whether it's broken or you're just being ignored.
posted by smackfu at 6:36 AM on April 18, 2005

How hard would it be to write an adjunct messager? A form-based tool for logged-in users where you select a recipient username, provide your email addy and message body. The email is sent from Metafilter (say, [e-mail]) with your nick and email. The recipient can be assured that the email is legit/not-spam and the identity of the sender authentic.
posted by Gyan at 7:14 AM on April 18, 2005

The recipient can be assured that the email is legit/not-spam and the identity of the sender authentic.

That's not how e-mail works. Unless you add something else like digital signatures, or maybe SPF.
posted by grouse at 7:25 AM on April 18, 2005

Well, the Metafilter mailer's sender field can be spoofed, but headers should sort that out. I'm also assuming no open relays or other backdoors. Besides, If the email is genuine, then you know the initiator is authentic, in case that's what you were referring to.

The other "solution" is maintain an internal messaging system. For convenience's sake, short retention spans.
posted by Gyan at 7:46 AM on April 18, 2005

Besides, If the email is genuine, then you know the initiator is authentic...

Sure. The question is how you know that the e-mail is genuine.

To me, the other direction is far more useful--send something to [e-mail] and have it arrive in my mailbox.
posted by grouse at 8:00 AM on April 18, 2005

How would that stop you receiving spam? It might even increase it. All spammers have to do is inundate [e-mail]. The point is to control senders. Now, like you mentioned, there's always the chance of spoofing the sender, but what are the actual probabilities? How would it work? Suppose I wanted to send a spoofed email to you. I'd need to know your email address, but I don't. If this scheme is implemented, one would remove the dark blue email field from the profile page. So, only the mailer and MeFi admins..etc know your email addy.
posted by Gyan at 8:14 AM on April 18, 2005

A form-based tool for logged-in users

*whips up a 2 line script to bombard form*
posted by quonsar at 8:19 AM on April 18, 2005

so anyway, i connected my FT-765 using the UGAT protocol but the line started futzing - turned out the ISO-5172 spec doesn't fix the OGCs for the FRTs. ha!

oh. wrong forum. sorry.
posted by andrew cooke at 8:21 AM on April 18, 2005

Good to know...thanks for sharing!
posted by iconomy at 8:37 AM on April 18, 2005

iconomy, try sending to my mefi username at gmail dot com, my spam blocker could have been overactive.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:42 AM on April 18, 2005

Sending it now. Be on the lookout!
posted by iconomy at 10:55 AM on April 18, 2005