[Beowulf] RFC: Restrict posting to subscribers only ?

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

I'm one of the moderators on the (moderated) Tesla Coil Mailing List,
using Mailman, and Chip Atkinson (list owner) has set up something that
silently discards a lot of the spam.  I'd say we get maybe <10% posts from
non-subscribers coming through along with the rest of the traffic.  Of
that 10% maybe half or a third is something not worthy of response.  The
rest of the non-subscriber posts, we just bounce with a nice message
saying "please subscribe, and your post will go through".

The list has been around for 10-20 years, so it must receive plenty of
spam at the front end.  If you're interested, I can put you in touch with
Chip and he'd probably be happy to explain what he does.

Jim

 
On 8/24/12 6:13 AM, "Joe Landman" <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:

>Apologies on the delay:
>
>
>On 08/23/2012 09:06 PM, Christopher Samuel wrote:
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>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'd like to solicit opinions from list members on changing the policy
>> of the list on messages from non-subscribers from the current default
>> of holding them for moderation to the position of rejecting them (with
>> an explanatory message).
>>
>> The reason is that currently us new list admins get many dozens of
>> spams a day being held for moderation and it would be very hard to
>> spot a legitimate message (from either a new subscriber or from a new
>> member who is having messages held for moderation) amongst them.
>>
>> It seems fairer to me for legitimate non-members to get an email
>> saying that their post has been rejected because they're not a member,
>> but pointing them to the web page to subscribe, rather than just a
>> message saying it's been held for moderation and then nothing (if it
>> gets missed).
>>
>> It's also fairer to new members who are under moderation (as spammers
>> do sign up to lists too) as their messages won't get missed in the
>> general flood of non-member spam.
>>
>> This is how all the other Mailman lists I run are configured and it's
>> not caused issues or complaints there.
>>
>> Thoughts please!
>>
>
>Subscriber only is good.
>
>> cheers,
>> Chris
>> - --
>>   Christopher Samuel        Senior Systems Administrator
>>   VLSCI - Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative
>>   Email: samuel at unimelb.edu.au Phone: +61 (0)3 903 55545
>>   http://www.vlsci.org.au/      http://twitter.com/vlsci
>>
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>
>
>-- 
>Joseph Landman, Ph.D
>Founder and CEO
>Scalable Informatics Inc.
>email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
>web  : http://scalableinformatics.com
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