[ZODB-Dev] Getting rid of ZODB versions (was Re: [ZWeb] Are Versions evil?)

[Ken Manheimer]

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Jim Fulton wrote:

> Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> > Please don't cross-post messages to zope lists.  Recently all the
> > mailing lists became subscriber-only lists.  As a result, if someone
> > cross-posts to several lists and I reply, I get nasty grams from all
> > the cross-posted lists that I'm not subscribed to.
> 
> Well, I'm sorry about that, but sometimes, the subject matter crosses
> multiple lists.
> 
> Perhaps we'll need to change the policy to hold messages from non
> subscribers, rather than rejecting them out of hand.

In the last few months i've inherited management of numerous zope lists,
and was handling the disposition of 20 to 50 held spam/virus-spew messages
**a day** across those lists.  (I counted)  I'm now down to 1 to 10 per
day (and could clobber those if i took a moment to make suitable rules for
the cvs-checkin and collector monitor lists).

     It is not tenable, as far as i'm concerned, to go back.

I manage more lists than most people, but even those who manage one or two
high-volume lists should not bear the continuous nuisance of the rotten
stinking spammers.

> Hm, I wonder how hard it would be to make mailman consider
> subscribers to all lists on a system when considering non-
> subscriberness.

I wouldn't be surprised if the code changes are relatively simple.  But 
this would increase the number of addresses against which every list is 
checked geometrically.  Offhand, i don't think it's a great idea, but may 
be worth exploring.  (Maybe the comparison mechanism is unoptimized, so 
that a little attention to optimizing it would offset the large increase 
in comparisons.)

On the other hand, you, as a person posting a message you need to go to
several lists, have a few options.

For one thing, you can send separate copies of the message to each list.  
Most mailers make it easy to get to sent messages, and resend to separate
addresses.  (You'll have to do a bit of editing, which i know you don't
like, but there's going to be *some* cost incurred to work smoothly around
the spam deluge.)

For another, you can send a single message to multiple lists, but set the
reply-to and followup-to on your messages, to go to the one list where you
want the discussion.  This is often a good idea anyway.  If it turns out
that setting those headers generally has the effect i'm suggesting, then
i'd say it's a good policy to require that any cross posts do that.  
Those that really want separate discussions on the separate lists can use
the first option...

Ken
klm at zope.com