Excerpts from mail: 23-Oct-98 Spam and INFO-AFS [EMAIL PROTECTED] (1955)
> But what do people think about the idea of making the list postable only
> by subscribers? It has been brought up in the past, but we have not
done it because of items (1) an (2) above
Thanks, Pat, for asking.
I think this is one of those situations where sensible policy of the
past (keeping the list totally open) needs to change in response to the
changing world. (i.e. I'm in favor of making the list postable only by
subscribers.)
I agree with the earlier stated opinions that it's not difficult to
subscribe directly to the list, and that the traffic is dominated by
mainline subscribers.
QUESTION:
Can we create a rejection note that says to anyone not on the list
trying to post, "We're sorry for the inconvenience. To cut down on spam
we made the list accept subscriber-only posts. Here is how you
subscribe directly."
This would make a step to try and keep those few and valuable postings
from people not directly on the list.
OR:
Put in place a moderated list for messages sent by non subscribers.
Some person reads the mesage, and if it's not spam, it gets forwarded.
Since, up to now, every spam that gets through kicks off a round of
hand-tooling the anti-spam software, and we've established that the
incoming mail from non-subscribers is a small but valuable stream, the
effort should be on par with the current level, for good value.
-Bill Cattey
MIT
Early AFS collaborator
who stays in the background whenever possible :-)
