I would think that archive.org would do the job if we asked them to? Else, this is a natural for a grant... On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Stephen Sprunk wrote: > Thus spake "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" > <froomkin@law.miami.edu> > > I have just run into an example of this (POISSON) when I was unable to > > find the archive. I was surprised -- and puzzled. Surely the storage > > costs for archiving ALL IETF lists, especially in their spamless form, > > can't be that great? What sort of volume are we talking about ? > > Depends on the list; the main IETF list is over 1.5MB/mo in my personal > archives. Given that the WG lists are maintained by volunteers, it would be > a significant cost to provide several years of archives out of the list > maintainer's pocket, especially when you add in the trolls and spam which > are not part of the list's relevant content. > > > > 2. The volume of spam in a bounced-messages archive would quickly > > > change your mind. > > > > Here, you could well be right. But would that have to be held beyond the > > life of the group? > > If you consider the bounced messages to be legitimate content worth > archiving, then their archive should be kept as long as the non-bounced > archive. > > > > 3. All of this would be easily solved by someone (e.g. IETF > secretariat) > > > providing list service for all WGs with a consistent policy. > > > > Agree. But I'd like to also suggest that part of this policy is keeping > > the (unspammed) archives around, if only for the sake of people (like > > me) who try sometimes to write the history of decision-making in some > > of these areas. > > I agree. I've petitioned several times for centralized lists and archives, > and have even offerred to provide them free to all WGs, but so far the IESG > has taken no action. My guess is there's nobody we all trust to be such a > central manager -- right now one of the IESG members is being accused of > list mismanagement. > > S > > -- Please visit http://www.icannwatch.org A. Michael Froomkin | Professor of Law | froomkin@law.tm U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA +1 (305) 284-4285 | +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) | http://www.law.tm -->It's warm here.<--