[ale] Spam (was Re: Lady V: The Pleasure Pill for Women)

[Fulton Green]

Not speaking for the listserv admins or anything, but ...

Limiting a list to recognised addies seems to be an ever-growing option
amongst various mailing lists. That'd be one way to stop it, certainly. Three
downsides, though:
- possible learning curve for newbies to the whole concept of mailing lists
  (then again, if they're email newbies, imagine how much fun learning Linux
  is going to be :)
- genuine, on-topic one-time-only responses for people who don't want to
  subscribe
- really crafty spammers will figure out how to auto-subscribe, if they
  haven't already

That all said, it's certainly a viable option.

One other option, which may/not already be implemented in Majordomo or
Mailman: have postings from previously unrecognized addresses (whether they
subscribe or not) bounce to a volunteer peer reviewer (one that could be
rotated on a chronological schedule). The volunteer can decide to accept, at
which point the addy goes into an "approved addy" DB, or reject, at which
point the addy could optionally go into a "blacklist addy" DB. If we start
getting fancy, we could even implement a /.-like karma rating for first-time
posters, even though I think that's a bit much for now. But I kinda like
this idea, actually.

If we do the peer review thing, then some of us need to create an acceptable
usage policy (AUP) so we'll know whether posting types such as item(s) for
sale, job opening(s), and non-Linux-but-technology-or-geek-lifestyle-related
discussions are apropos. At least one other poster has mentioned the
possibility of having to draw up an AUP policy, so it may be high time to
sort that whole issue out.

Sad that it's come to this, but at least we have some options for fighting.

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 05:14:54PM -0600, Gary Maltzen wrote:
> We've seen an inordinate number of these recently.
> Can the listserv limit submissions to subscribers only??
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