It seems like the large majority of the virus generated e-mail and spam that is going out from the various @allakhazam addresses is coming from the indexed search pages. Some moron sets a web spider to go hit every e-mail address on a given domain, and poof, suddenly kaolain@allakhazam.com is sending you e-mails about discount viagra. No, I don't have any for sale. Stop asking me.
Anyways, here's how I have seen the situation delt with on other forums, maybe something similar could be done here relitivly easily?
Currently, clicking on the "e-mail user" button in the forum or from the profile generates an e-mail in whatever e-mail program you want via a hyperlink. That's all well and good in an ideal world, but that hyperlink contains our e-mail addresses.
What I would like to see instead is this: a new directory is created on the servers with every norobots.txt trick known to mankind to prevent it from being indexed by search engines. In this folder, every premium user would have a page with their e-mail address. Clicking on the "e-mail user" button in the forums would then load that page, where the user could then click on the e-mail address. I'm thinking in html terms here, so there may be some easier way to generate this in asp? I really wish I had learned ASP instead of cold fusion now. Anyways, yes, it would be one more click, but I think it would also cut down dramatically on the amount of spam that gets generated from the average user. You moderators that have e-mail addresses on the main pages would be probably out of luck unless someone went though the archive and replaced all the e-mail urls
Anyways, that's my idea, any feedback, up to and including "that's the stupidest idea I've ever heared" are welcome...