Q1A. I read that you obtain your addresses from Usenet
postings. Do you obtain addresses from other places also?
A1A. No, we don't have addresses collected from other sources such as mailing
lists or web pages. We use all of the official Usenet newsgroup
hierarchies, along with essentially all of "alt", and a
number of special-purpose, regional,
and foreign-language hierarchies.
Q2A. What hardware is this server using?
A2A. Currently we are using a single-processor SPARCstation 20 with 112 Mb
of memory. A separate machine is used to extract the addresses from
Usenet articles.
Q3A. Will you remove an address from the database?
A3A. Yes, for a removal please write to webmaster@usenet-addresses.mit.edu
and include the relevant lines from a Search Results page. For
example, if a Search Results line included
"Ward Cleaver, Jr." <WCleaver@the-salt-mines.com>
then specify
"Ward Cleaver, Jr." <WCleaver@the-salt-mines.com>
in the e-mail, rather than only WCleaver@the-salt-mines.com.
Q1B. My address Rutherford@BBN-VAX.ARPA hasn't been valid for years.
Wouldn't it be better not to include this old address in your
database?
A1B. Actually, the older addresses are sometimes very useful for
cross-referencing names. If I knew there was a Fred Rutherford who
worked at BBN some years ago, and I could match your middle initial
with a more recent Fred T. Rutherford address, then I might be more
sure that I'd found the correct person to write to. In any case,
for an equally good match, the server always lists the newer
addresses ahead of the older addresses.
Q2B. My address shows up a few times, with the only changes
being in the capitalization of my e-mail address. Why do you bother
including the duplicate addresses?
A2B. Sometimes if an address appears with different capitalizations,
it means that address has been used for posting more often -- perhaps with
different news-reader software. This might occasionally mean that
it's a better contact address than any other ones listed.
Q3B. Since I started my new weekend job, I've been posting
to Usenet using the "From:" line
Wally Cleaver-Lifeguard <wally@friends-lake.org>
and I noticed that searching for my address doesn't work with my
last name "Cleaver". What gives?
A3B. Our software can't determine that "Lifeguard" has some
special role in your address, and thus it guesses that you have
a hyphenated last name "Cleaver-Lifeguard". You can avoid
this by leaving a space after your last name, or (of course) by just not
including your job title there.
Q4B. Ever since the incident with the History II midterm,
I've been including a quote along with my name in my "From:" line:
"Eddie Haskell - To thine own self be true"
but when I find my name in your server's search output, my e-mail
address is truncated and there isn't any link from my entry.
A4B. The server only stores a limited number of characters from each
address (about 80 characters), in order to limit the use of our database for
advertising and announcements embedded in "From:" lines.
Since your full name and e-mail address aren't available to our
software, it can't create any useful link. This behavior also affects
people who have quotes or extended contact information in their
"From:" lines. If you want to include that type of
information, it's probably best to put it in a signature at the end of
your message.
Please report problems to webmaster@usenet-addresses.mit.edu