Some time ago Mike Palij expressed concern (uncharacteristic but appreciated) that my posts were not being archived at Mail-Archive. I looked into it, and, sure enough, he was right. I was not the only one this happened to, but it seemed to happen more often to me than to anyone else. My posts were going out to subscribers, but not to the archive. It was also mysterious that a few of them did get archived, although most did not.
It started to drive me nuts. Was it censorship? Were my occasionally controversial or potty-mouth posts deemed inappropriate for Mail-Archive? Why me? Or was it a time-of-posting effect, and I just happened to post more often at peak times when messages were prone to be lost? I looked into it. None of the above, it turns out. The problem is tinyurl. In an effort to save people the annoyance of having to deal with long url links in my posts, I routinely run them through the tinyurl web service to shorten them. Many of my posts contain tinyurls. Of my recent posts, those which were excluded from the archive contained a tinyurl; those which made it did not. My tests confirmed this. So I can get into the archive as long as I don't use a tinyurl. . Presumably, this rule holds for others as well. I also checked into snipurl, an alternative service for shortening urls. They're ok. It seems that snipurls are kosher but tinyurls are not. I have no idea why Mail-Archive hates tinyurls. The final test is this post. It does not contain a tinyurl. If it makes it into the archive, Q.E.D. And Mike P. need worry no more about my posts. Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=15329 or send a blank email to leave-15329-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
