[Zope.Com Geeks] Re: [Zope-dev] zope-dev list policies

[Tim Peters]

[Ken Manheimer]
> In either mode, essentially, list members would be able to get postings
> to the list only from their registered account.

Or accounts.  When I've faced a list like this as a user, I've subscribed
multiple times, once from each account I'm likely to post from, but set the
"no delivery" option on all but the primary (IMO) subscription.  This is
something users can do on their own.

> I don't have a confident guess about whether that would be prohibitive
> to any or many.  I suppose we could try it and see whether how it sits
> with people.

So far, the people who post from only one account have insisted it won't
make real trouble for anyone <wink>.  I don't know how it works for people
posting from gmane.

> There's also the incidental considerations - both modes have drawbacks.

Yes, but all modes have drawbacks, including the status quo.

> ...
> So i could see giving a try to non-member-posts-rejected,

That would actually lighten *our* (list admin) loads.  Nobody is sympathetic
to that except us, of course.  Even with the current "open list" policy, I
still get a ridiculous number of messages held for review.

> if the membership thinks the added inconvenience is worth the reduced
> spam.

There won't be consensus on this.  "Votes" on zodb-dev have been about
evenly split, and I don't expect that will change.

> I have the impression, though, that the spam on most of the high-traffic
> zope.org maillists is relatively low-proportion.  Am i mistaken?

No idea -- my personal SB filter spares me from seeing almost all junk email
from all sources, and I get a few hundred of them per day.  By far the
biggest source is bounces to webmaster at python.org, due to viruses and spam
forged to appear as if sent from webmaster at python.org.  Compared to that
load, every other source is in the noise for me.

> ...
> Reject (actually, discard) is pretty easy - you just have to reply to a
> particular attachment in the held-message notice.

Approval is the same process (at least under a current-enough Mailman),
except you need to put an

    Approved: <list password>

line in the headers, or as the body of the reply.  My VBA code knows the
list passwords for the various mailing lists, and discard/approve is just a
matter of clicking a button for me (one button for discard, another for
approve).  It still takes real time to open and review the messages Mailman
is asking about, though.

> (I **wish** the confirmation message for the discard would indicate
> that a discard happened - instead, it says "Confirmation succeeded",
> which is nearly worse than no feedback at all, ...

Even worse, it says exactly the same thing for an approved message.  But
wouldn't Barry be a better recipient for this rant <wink>?