Re: My delayed complaint about spam on this list

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

On 06/05/2018 07:18 PM, Frank Farance wrote:
> Someone suggested a moderator (or multiple moderators) that would 
> approve messages from outsiders.  That sounds like the easiest approach 
> because it anyone can write to the list and there would be just a short 
> delay for those people who aren't subscribers, but the main benefit 
> would be the lack of spam.

The GNU mailing lists use a mailman instance, and many of them are set 
up to use a spam filter front end coupled with a human moderator that 
must whitelist ALL first-time posters (whether or not the poster is 
subscribed; subscription is not a prerequisite), and I help moderate 
some of those lists. Once you've been whitelisted, further messages from 
you have no delay unless they are overlarge or trigger the spam filter.

Cygwin lists are hosted by ezmlm-idx, not mailman, so I'm not sure what 
knobs it has, and whether those knobs are similar to what mailman 
provides.  So I'm not even sure if it is technically possible to make a 
change to a moderator queue.  But as long as we're requesting changes, 
I'd ALSO like to get rid of the reply-to munging, as reply-to-all is the 
only sane policy for a list that allows posts from non-subscribers 
(that's another topic that has been frequently posted on this list). 
HOWEVER, per https://sourceware.org/lists.html#faq, this list is run by 
sourceware.org overseers, and they don't read THIS list, so complaining 
HERE won't make a single difference.  If you want a new list policy, you 
must first contact overseers and convince them to make the change.

> 
> So here's my question (and it assumes that there would be volunteer(s) 
> to moderate):

Since I already moderate various GNU lists, adding a Cygwin moderation 
queue to my plate is no big deal, so I'd volunteer (provided that the 
technology for moderating can be managed completely by email, rather 
than requiring me to periodically visit a webpage without an email 
reminder).

> 
> Question: "Would a moderation system work where subscribers could send 
> messages directly, but non-subscribers would need a moderator to approve 
> the message?"

Even if the overseers can't turn on human moderation, they are also the 
right people to complain to about spam blocking not being effective enough.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

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