Michael Grant wrote:
> > > After all, if just anyone, without subscription, can post to a list, then
> > > it's
> > > open to the entire Internet, and then, as we all know, anarchy ensues...
>
> The Debian mailing lists too are open for anyone to post regardless if
> they are subscribed.
Sorry but I don't understand. Because the Debian lists are open and
do allow anyone to post there. I'll stipulate that as a fact unless
it is refuted. I have become less involved the last few years and
perhaps after decades there has been a change?
> It's not anarchy but sometimes spam does get posted
Yes. Sometimes a spam message will get posted. But it is infrequent
enough that it does not cause serious problems.
> and some people go and report it to places like spamcop (I've been
> guilty here!).
Agreed. And understood.
That is rather a separate philosophical problem. Being on the mailing
list side it feels wrong for people to subscribe to something and then
report it to 3rd parties as abuse. In general I don't think any
mailing list that someone has subscribed to should have messages from
there reported as spam to 3rd parties. Instead I think they should
complain (loudly) to the mailing list administrator(s). Get them
motivated to improve their policies! An occasional spam is almost
inevitable as 1) everything has a non-zero error rate and 2) spammers
are humans and humans are very clever. But there is no need to make
it easy for them.
For my own subscriptions I don't run any mailing list messages to my
personal mailbox through SpamAssasssin. I file mailing list messages
directly and if there is spam then I will see it. And I will complain
about it. (For me the chiark lists are the most problematic in this
regard. I would have mentioned them as a 3rd example of open lists
but in their case they are a bad example due to lack of anti-spam.)
> Debian has a mechanism to flag messages as spam in the archives so
> they can be removed. It's far from anarchy that imagine but it's
> definitely not zero labor.
They claim that it is not very difficult however and they encourage the
reporting of it. Therefore I always report spam to them when I see it.
Removing spam from the archives prevents a site from being flagged by
search engines as harboring malicious content. And reporting spam
allows them to keep their anti-spam rules trained up on new attacks.
So regardless of the effort on the list admin side it has become a
required thing to do.
> For me the biggest problem with allowing non-subscribers or
> subscribers that don't get mail back from the list is that there is no
> way for someone to know if you are reading their replies. I'm never
> sure if I should CC the person directly or not on these open lists.
>
> On the Spamassassin list, I know the person has to be subscribed so I
> don't have to CC them.
Agreed! And I think this is the strongest argument brought up so far!
It makes knowing how to respond easy. And frankly I often cheat on
other lists by looking at who is subscribed which is not information
available to everyone. Therefore knowing absolutely that one should
only ever respond to the list is a good thing.
I contemplated pulling this point up to the top and leading with it as
I think it is an excellent point for usability of mailing lists.
However I note that on this list it does not prevent people from
CC'ing anyway. :-(
> I doubt most mailing lists are smart enough to CC such
> non-subscribers on replies.
I don't know of any mailing list that CC's non-subscribers. But
that's often desired by the people who post but read an archive of the
list instead of being subscribed to it. They are neither subscribed
nor do they want a CC either. Unless they have specifically asked for
one to be sent to them.
> Multiple people I know join lists and then create a filter rule to put
> the list directly in to the Trash folder or some folder that they
> automatically delete older messages. Then, they read the lists in
> that folder. That may be your best option in my opinion.
I do that! :-) Or rather I file mailing list messages to a folder,
automatically expire them, and read the messages from that folder.
It's rather like a newsgroup in flow doing it that way.
> A hack comes to mind... maybe something could be written using sieve
> or procmail to spot which messages you sent to the list and move them
> and replies to it back to your inbox automatically.
For the Debian lists that works because they are consistently
configured across all of the lists. And actually what you suggest is
very similar to something Brian suggested there during a discussion we
were having on this very idea! This message and another one after it
in the thread you might find at least academically interesting. :-)
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2013/03/msg00571.html
For Mailman lists this is problematic because individually different
lists have a "No duplicates" setting where if Mailman thinks you were
CC'd then it avoids sending you the mailing list copy of the message.
Which by my way of thinking always produces exactly the opposite of
the desired result. Because then the direct message, missing all of
the mailing list headers which are desired for proper filing, arrives
first and the mailing list copy never arrives. And it fails to handle
the case where multiple lists were recipients and you are subscribed
to multiple of them. IMNHO it's just a bad feature.
It's also a feature that casual users often point to as a reason not
to use the mailing list header fields for filing and instead request
subject tags to use for filing. However subject tags break DKIM
signatures.
Bob
