Subject: Re: bug#43073: Trim/hide full email headers on debbugs

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:05:41 -0500

Hi Bob,

Bob Proulx wrote:

>     https://debbugs.gnu.org/db/XY/XYABC.html
>
> I use the BTS a lot but really I had never looked at the db views
> before these complaints.  Is there a use for the db views?
>
> What do people think of disabling the display of the entire db view
> tree?  I propose to do this unless someone tells me not to.

Note that the "db view tree" is the part that gets indexed by search
engines. Search engines are (obviously) denied from the cgi bug pages,
for reasons of system load. So if you get rid of the db pages, it will
be impossible to search debbugs reports using standard web search
engines. There are ways around this, such as searches of the associated
bug mailing lists, and native search on debbugs.gnu.org, but it would
seem like a loss to me, for very little real gain.

Note that the IP address is also in the mbox mailing list archives:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/mbox/bug-diffutils/2020-02

and now also in the help-debbugs mailing list archives (Streisand effect
ahoy).

The right solution is probably to make the db pages not include full
header information, but of course that is more work. I think it is
/usr/lib/debbugs/db2html that would need patching (already patched to
hide email addresses).