[Haskell] Re: on starting Haskell-Edu, a new education-related Haskell-related mailing list

[Benjamin L.Russell]

I forgot to mention that I used to be a moderator for a discussion
forum at MetroMac.org, a New York Macintosh user group.  Then one day
a cracker came along, deleted all the posts of *all* the users (and
the backups!), and somehow figured out how to removed my moderator
privileges in the database as well.

(The owners of that site needed a scapegoat, so they blamed *me* for
being the direct target of the attack (I have no idea why), and didn't
restore my moderator privileges.  Since they had lost all their posts
as well, they then needed to spend countless hours building a new
forum and trying to gain back readership, a situation which made they
extremely frustrated and angry.  They did give me a free Supporting
Member account, which normally costs USD $20/year, for one year, but
that was all.  They also forbade me from posting many new posts in
direct succession in other forums to make up for the lost posts,
perhaps in fear that that could somehow risk another cracker attack.)

If a new forum is created, I strongly recommend that mail message
copies of all posts also be sent, and that *off-site* backups be made
frequently.  Web discussion forums are much more susceptible to
cracker attacks than mailing lists unless e-mail messages of all posts
are also sent, because the posts are normally stored in a database.

However, if you do need somebody to moderate/administer the forum, I
may be able to pick up quickly on the details, since I do have
experience as a moderator.

-- Benjamin L. Russell

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:38:07 +0900, Benjamin L.Russell
<DekuDekuplex at Yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:04:16 +0100, Simon Marlow <marlowsd at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> 
>>I'm probably amongst those that won't participate much in the forums 
>>because I find them frustratingly slow to navigate, but I don't see any 
>>reason why we shouldn't *have* forums at all.  We just need someone to set 
>>it up and do the admin.  Volunteers?
>
>Count me in as a volunteer for the admin, please.
>
>-- Benjamin L. Russell