list spam

[Robert Watson]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Peter Wemm wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Mike Lempriere <mike at vintners.net> wrote:
>> I've had it with the list spam -- is the any possibility of moderating this 
>> list, or changing it to must-be-subscriber-to-post?
>
> I for one would like this too.
>
> On one hand, it is inconvenient for people with multiple email addresses, 
> but there is an easy way around that.  What you do is subscribe twice, and 
> go to the options page and turn off email for one of them.  That way you can 
> (for example) email with your normal address and receive email from the list 
> on unique addresses for sorting or whatever.
>
> We do this on other lists for freebsd.org.  However, we need to have mailman 
> be a little smarter about it.  Right now, it holds the messages for 
> moderation.  Instead, it needs to immediately bounce the email with 
> instructions about what to do.  Otherwise we have the situation where 
> somebody emails and gets i the queue, then sends with the right address and 
> it goes through. Later on, the message is approved and we get a duplicate on 
> the list.

If we're going to go that route, what I'd like to see is a message-free 
freebsd-posters list I can join once using a posting address that is then 
authorized to post to any list.  That way I don't have to talk the 80+ mailing 
lists and re-subscribe to each one a second time, disabling receipt of 
messages, etc.  This would also allow us to expempt things like gnats, etc, 
easily.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge