[Linux-aus] Is this now a spam list?

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Tony Nugent">

> I've pleaded with Anand to close the list to subscribers only, but for his
> own (probably admirable) reasons, he wanted to keep it open.
> 
> imho the only sure-fire way to stop this stuff dead in its tracks is to
> close it.  imho.

On the other hand, an open list is welcoming, casual and less work. I find
those points greatly appealing for a community organisation.

My experiences from assisting with two major (-ish in the case of SLUG) list
servers:

  - GNOME has chosen to close its lists to non-subscriber posting, and
    receives no spam. However, it's a real pain for administrators who have
    to confirm many, many valid emails posted from different addresses, tell
    serial mis-posters why their emails are so slow to hit the list and how
    to post correctly, etc. I've installed James Henstridge's SpamAssassin
    filter, which discards a lot of crap, and keeps a lot of crap as well as
    fair bit of valid mail for moderation. Non-English lists make this a bit
    troublesome.

  - SLUG has chosen to keep its lists open to non-subscriber posting, and
    receives very little spam. We've made the effort to neutralise it at the
    server level, and I think the list (and sanity of the administrators) is
    far better for it. We use the same SpamAssassin system as GNOME, but it
    works more effectively because we can crank up the scores of non-English
    posts and tighten up the discard/moderate scores a bit.

Anand will be able to describe the Debian experience, which is a very
interesting case study. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
     "World domination is a community responsibility." - Michael Hall,      
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