[forum] Re: List membership

[William M. Quarles]

Andrew C Aitchison wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, William M. Quarles wrote:
> 
>>OK, I am told to go to hell basically because I don't like the spam on 
>>this list that makes it through XFree86's Spam Assasin, my ISP's filter, 
>>and my personal Mozilla filter. 
> 
> If you thought I said that I am sorry; I certainly didn't mean to.

No, it wasn't you, it was Marc Aurele La France

>>I propose making the list members-only 
>>> posts and I get told why it can't be that way.
> 
> I'm sorry if my confusion misled you.
> It seems that the list is neither open nor closed, but has a 
> machine-controlled middle way of some sort.
>  

I'm not confused, it used to be that anyone could post the list without 
being subscribed.  I posted to the list myself once before I subscribed 
and it went through.  Stupid part about them doing that is that this 
list fills in the "Reply-To" header, so that off-list person would never 
see a response to that message.  Someone closed it off for good reason 
(spam).  It just hasn't seem to do a lot of good.  I find it funny that 
the other XFree86 lists are getting it, too.  It makes me question the 
organization.

>>> I decide to sign off from the list and send a message through Gmane.  I 
>>> get a message back saying that my post was not allowed because I am a 
>>> non-member.  So I guess all of the spammers are members?  Nice.
> 
> 
> The list appears to be automatic signup; as I suggested in my previous 
> mail, the spam merchants know how to sign up to such email lists.
> Automatic signup seems appropriate to me for a list where we are
> interested comments from "non-members"

I still had to verify my e-mail address, which is usually more than a 
spammer is usually willing to do (but you can't put anything past them).

> (I'm thinking of the gui/window-manager/desktop environment people
> who were originally the people who had a different take on where we
> should be heading). Having a person approving list membership
> asks for delays (they do need to sleep and have a day or two away
> from email) and could leave us open to charges of censorship.

I've never had to have approval to sign up for any of the lists that I 
am signed up for, and I am signed up for like 10 of them.  I've received 
a total of one spam message on a list other than this one in the five 
years that I have been using GNU/Linux.

> However, given the lack of response from anyone running the list
> (and thus capable of upgrading spamassassin) we are wasting our time
> discussing this.

I got the impression that the Marc fellow was high up on the food chain. 
  He's probably ignoring all of my threads now anyway.

> The list has had no content (I see this as meta-content) for a year
> or two, so I propose that we just close it down. Since the managers
> don't read the list I don't expect this to happen.

Heh, this might get me started on the license again, look out.

William