On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 04:46:52PM -0500, J. Milgram wrote:
> Even if the list is restricted to members only, isn't there some
> mechanism to cull out probably admin requests and forward them to the
> list administrator?
Yeppers. All modern mailing list management programs have at least
_some_ facility that attempts to intercept misdirected administrative
requests and send them to the list-owner. Every now and then, this
results in a spurious reject (especially on mailing lists that discuss
mailing list management programs ;-) ) but for the most part, the simple
string/regular-expression matching used gets the job done.
This would work better -- in the sense that there would be fewer
misdrected requests -- if two things had happened that didn't.
The first is that the "-request" standard (see RFC 2142) wasn't globally
implemented and then repeatedly pounded into the heads of the users until
they could chant it like a mantra. The second is that a standard command
syntax for interacting with mailing list management programs has never
materialized. So as a result, we have majordomo (and majordomo 2)
and mailman and ezlm and listproc and even obsolete crud like listserv [*]
and they _all_ have command sets that are just different enough to
frustrate attempts at user education. Bad on us for not writing a
standard, printing it out on thick cardboard stock, and smacking
MLM software authors over the head with it until they complied.
("I said SEMI-colon, you dolt!" WHAP WHAP WHAP!)
Imagine a vague hand-waving reference here to:
Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2142.html
List-Id: A Structured Field and Namespace for the
Identification of Mailing Lists
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2919.html
and:
Basic Mailing List Management Principles for Preventing Abuse
http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/manage.html
Clueless Mailers' Spamdemic Research Center: Best Practices for Mailing
List Management
http://www.cluelessmailers.org/info/listmanagement.html
The thing is: we are probably approaching the time when outscatter due to
MLM software replies to forgeries will become enough of an issue that we
need to do something about it other than just observe that it's a problem.
(And we can't just say "subscribe via the web", as some suggest: it's a
*mailing list*, it has to be fully operable via *mail*. And that wouldn't
stop replies to forgeries, anyway.) That means that we need a mechanism
which works in-band and relies on rejects, not bounces...and that in
turn means that we probably need something integrated with the MTA.
And _that_ means that it's probably not worth having the debate over MLM
command syntax/semantics now because it may well be moot. And *that*
means that I really need some coffee now.
[*] Whose vendor has an ongoing spamming problem, by the way. It's been
repeatedly discussed on Spam-L.
