List Administration, was: Re: your mail

[Chuck Swiger]

Jerry McAllister wrote:
[ ... ]
> Gee whiz.   Another round of this argument.   Seems it comes along
> about every 2 or 3 months and is all the same and seems to generate
> as much unnecessary traffic as spamers do.   It just indicates that 
> the advocates do not understand the function or operation of this list.   

Modern mailing lists are capable of holding unapproved postings for moderator 
approval.  If <questions at freebsd.org> was moderated, the spam would be read once 
by a member of the team of moderators, and then discarded rather than being 
forwarded to all of the members of the list.

Legitimate list traffic from members of the list would be approved by default, 
with a few exceptions (ie, administrivia postings like "unsubscribe").

Legitmate list traffic from non-members of the list would be approved after 
moderator review.  If there is sufficient interest-- being defined as at least 
two other people who are willing to act as moderators (*)-- I'll set up a 
moderated version of this list and let the user community decide for themselves.

-Chuck

-------
(*): Having several people moderate makes the task load easier, tends to balance 
out bursts of held postings, and makes a second opinion available for boundary 
cases.