[OT] Re: [Coastal] Spam???

mtucker@airmail.net mtucker at airmail.net
Mon Jun 14 11:40:02 PDT 2004


> This current set of spamming has been hitting every SCA and other e-mail
> lists with public
> memberships, that I'm on.  I'm sure the spam software will catchup to a
> way to screen for them,
> but as Cian said, many are signing up as 'members' to the public lists.
> I'm sure it will be
> handled eventually, but meanwhile we have the 'delete' key.
> Hillary

This discussion is really off-topic, but it's still interesting (at least
to me, but then I'm a list administrator). :-)

Administrator tools have become more versatile to meet the threat of spam.
You can create filters at the server level (which Pug has done, and
they're darned good, too!) to sort out suspected spam and flag it for
moderation (or just delete it). Beyond that, each individual list
administrator has quite a bit of flexibility, from "no moderation" to
"moderate every message".

For hou-announce, I moderate every single message. The traffic is low
enough that it's not too much of a hassle. This way, you don't have to be
a member (subscribed to the list) in order to post, which I think is best
for "announce" type lists.

For some of the other lists I admin, I find that this combination works
very well:

1) only members may post
2) anyone can join (subscribing is not moderated)
3) everyone's first message is moderated
4) only members may view the archives or the list of members

This effectively shuts down the spam, without causing a huge inconvenience
for either the posters or me. It's still possible for a determined and
clever spammer to get past this roadblock. But luckily the server-side
filters catch most (if not all) of that stuff.

Michael Silverhands



More information about the Coastal mailing list