Almost two months ago I posted a message about rules of the mailing list and stated my intention to enforce them strictly.
That was followed by another post when I discovered that the mailing list software does not provide what would be my preferred tool, which would be to place someone under manual moderation. The least action I can do is to have the list reject mail from someone. Before taking what I consider such drastic action I brought the matter to a vote in the SpamAssassin Project Management Committee (the PMC), and then asked members of the ASF Board for advice. That, combined with the fact that like everyone else my involvement with Apache SpamAssassin is volunteer work that I fit in with my day job and family life, has resulted in quite some time passing before I felt ready to post this announcement and take action. The past week has seen a real degenerating mess appear on the mailing list. A number of people have violated the rules I set down in June. More importantly, as was pointed out to me by members of the ASF Board, there have been violations of the Apache Code of Conduct (CoC) https://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/conduct which are rules that apply to every community that is part of an Apache Software Foundation project. The rules of this mailing list are simple: Keep the mails on topic for the list, and keep it civil, where the latter is spelled out in the CoC. I still want to take the minimum action that has a chance at restoring order to the list. To that end I am banning just one person whom I see as consistently violating the CoC even with no trigger event that itself was a violation of the CoC. The fact that I am not banning everyone who has posted inappropriate emails does not mean that I condone those emails. It is purely a reflection of my belief that the rest of you are willing to keep your posts civil, will do so if not provoked, and will not be provoked by emails that are within the bounds of the topics of this mailing list such as people asking questions that reveal that they know much less about configuring mail servers than you do. Now let’s get back to keeping this mailing list on topic. That means please no messages to the list commenting on this issue, whether you agree or disagree with me. Feel free to email me directly if you have something to say that is not part of a user level discussion or query or answer regarding Apache SpamAssassin. Thank you, Sidney Markowitz Chair, Apache SpamAssassin PMC
