[ZODB-Dev] zodb-dev list policies

[Michael Bernstein]

Christian Robottom Reis wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 11:36:12AM -0400, Tim Peters wrote:
> 
>>[Christian Robottom Reis]
>>
>>>...
>>>Spambayes takes care of the nonsense anyway, doesn't it?
>>
>>It does for me, but because I have a personal SB filter running.
> 
> Same here. I get about 150 spam/day, and that's not counting the 200 or
> so dropped daily at the SMTP level. Given that people can spam you
> directly without needing to go through a list, I don't think anybody
> that is a serious email user can live without personal spam filtering
> anyway, which is why I argue the annoyance is minimal.

All else being equal, I would agree with you, but there are a few 
factors that cause me to disagree:

1) Spam filtering (at least for me) is less effective on the messages 
that come through the mailing list. I seem to get higher incidences of 
both false-positives and false-negatives on messages coming through 
mailing lists. I think this can be attributed to the footers added to 
each message, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I have to spend more time 
training my filter as a result.

2) Spam messages are left in the archives, reducing the archives' value, 
and giving the spammers an extra incentive to spam lists.

3) mailing lists act as convenient spam amplifiers. While reducing the 
already infinitesimal per-message cost might seem a pointless exercise 
to you and me, it directly affects the bottom line of the largest spam 
offenders in both direct and indirect ways.

Cheers,

-- 
- Michael R. Bernstein  |  Author of Zope Bible
   michaelbernstein.com  |  & Zope.org Webmaster
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