[off-list] Fwd: sourceware.org Automake mailing list archive is a dead-end

[Jim Meyering]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 10:19:31PM +0100, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>>> [Me going through oldish backlog...]
>>>
>>> Hi Ralf, Jim.
>>>
>>> Could we do something about the following "organizational" issue?
>>>   <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2011-07/msg00042.html>
>>> (original message also forwarded in the attachement, for completeness).
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>   Stefano
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Dave Hart <davehart@gmail.com>
>>> Subject: sourceware.org Automake mailing list archive is a dead-end
>>> To: GNU Automake mailing list <automake@gnu.org>
>>> Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 23:39:23 +0000 (15 weeks, 2 days, 21 hours ago)
>>> Reply-To: davehart_gmail_exchange_tee@davehart.net
>>>
>>> The 3rd hit on:
>>>
>>> http://www.google.com/search?q=Automake+mailing+list+archive
>>>
>>> is RedHat's:
>>>
>>> http://sourceware.org/ml/automake/
>>>
>>> This is a dead-end, though, as it has nearly no recent messages
>>> archived, and those I could find were all Western Union phishing
>>> attempts.  I see at http://sources.redhat.com/automake/ that only
>>> automake-cvs@ and automake-prs@ mailing lists are now hosted by
>>> RedHat.  It would be spiffy if the dead-end sourceware.org page would
>>> redirect or point to the real archive at
>>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/.  If it has older archives
>>> not present at lists.gnu.org, it would be nice if the responsible
>>> party would shut down the ongoing archiving of the Western Union
>>> stuff, and possibly trim the index to only show such older, legitimate
>>> archives.
>>>
>>> Prefixing "GNU " to the query gets more useful results, but hey, my
>>> fingers are lazy.  I welcome correction if my facts are confused.  I'm
>>> certainly unclear on the differences between sources.redhat.com and
>>> sourceware.org.
>>
>>Hi Stefano,
>>
>>I looked through the last few years of archives and found
>>absolutely nothing automake-related.  All but a few months
>>had no messages at all.  The handful that had anything had only
>>a spam message or two.  The most recent automake-related
>>message seems to date back to May of 2005.
>>
>>I've Cc'd the sourceware.org admin list.  Someone there should be able
>>to disable further posting to that list.  Maybe it's easy to remove the
>>empty archives so that it's clearer that there's nothing in them.
>>If so, would you please remove all archives
>>from 2005-06 on?
>
> automake left sourceware many years ago.  I'm tired of questions about
> this so I've deleted the archives and all the traces I could find of
> automake in qmail.

Christopher?

Gee... that was counterproductive.
Maybe I wasn't clear?  The old archives had tons of good content.
There were tens of thousands of messages up to May of 2005,
many of which were still linked to.  By removing the archives,
you have broken all of those links.

Among the archives you have deleted, there were some messages
that are not archived anywhere else I could find.
http://sources.redhat.com/automake/ started at April 1999,
while http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/ started
15 months later, in September 2000.

Assuming there are backups, please consider restoring the broken
links, or at least make the files available to us so we can put
copies on the lists.gnu.org archive.