[Beowulf] RFC: Restrict posting to subscribers only ?

[Prentice Bisbal]

Doesn't the subscription confirmation e-mail kind of handle this 
already? I suspect spammers send from random or fictitious addresses and 
don't check (or even receive) email sent to those addresses, so it's 
unlikely they'll be confirmed as subscribers to the mailing list.

I think Greg raises an excellent point that we shouldn't reply to 
spammers. Perhaps we should just silently ignore posts from 
non-subscribers. If they are real humans, they should figure it out 
easily enough that they need to subscribe to post. Most mailing lists 
have a web page advertising the list, with instructions on how to 
subscribe to the list and list policy, such as needing to subscribe in 
order to post. I think that should be adequate to keep spam away but not 
real humans.

Besides, don't we hate when people post something that clearly indicates 
they didn't RTFM? ;)

--
Prentice


On 08/24/2012 06:47 AM, Andrew Holway wrote:
> Maybe we should have a
>
> 'Please send us a brief email explaining why you would like to join
> the list so that we know that your not a spammer"
>
>
> 2012/8/24 Christopher Samuel<samuel at unimelb.edu.au>:
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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!
>>
>> 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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