Re: Junk mail

On 10/24/06, Koen Kooi <> wrote:
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> Michael Rozdoba schreef:
> > Koen Kooi wrote:
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> >> Victor Moran schreef:
> >>> How many people have to agree to make the list subscription-only
> >>> before it gets changed?
> >> The list-admin and core-developers I guess.
> >
> > After all, it would be silly to do what the list readers want, wouldn't it?
>
> I've seen enough reports of users that needed some time to gather enough courage to post
> to a mailinglist to know that the "OMG, spam bad, subscriber-only good LOL"-crowd is a
> vocal minority.
> That being said, I should state the following:
>
> * spam is bad and spammers should burn in hell
> * spam should be filtered in every part of the mail-chain (including at the user end)
> * complaining about spam on an *e-mail* list is more annoying as spam itself.
>
> The bulk of the users aren't subscribed to the distro mailinglists (are *you* subscribed
> to your desktop distro's ml?), and aren't what you'd call 'FOSS veterans', so making
> mailinglists subscriber-only will mean you're cutting yourself off from the largest part
> of the userbase.
> If you are annoyed by the 'large'[1] amount of spam on this list you should
>
> a) get a better spam filter
>
> or
>
> b) unsubscribe
>
> but either way: stop posting useless and annoying "OMG, SPAM!!!!1!!!111!!!" type of
> messages. We all know spam exists and we all want it to go away, but you all have posted
> more "OMG, SPAM!!!!1!!!111!!!" mails the past few hours than this list got actual spam
> mails in a week.
>
> Congratulations, you just made the 'ham' more annoying as the 'spam'.
>
> Also note that making the list subscriber only puts a lot of churn on the already
> overworked OZ developers, so you should really ask yourselves "If I want this list to be
> subscriber-only, do I want to invest the time to dig through the held-for-moderation mails
> daily?"[4]. Based on my experience[2] the 'complainers' are generally not 'doers', so
> you'd have to have contributed in the past (patches, bug reports, reviews, usefull
> respones to mail, etc) before passing my internal ignore filter. I'm not saying you
> shouldn't complain (you should, but in a constructive way), but I'm saying that you should
> thing thrice before *demanding* stuff.
>
> Koen[3]
>
> [1] I get more spam mails *per hour* than this list gets *per week*, but my ISPs
> mailfilter + thunderbirds spam subsystem give me only ~3 false negatives per week.
> [2] I've been release-manager for various 'embedded' distros for some years now
> [3] No, I'm not an OZ developer right now
> [4] Out of experience: it is annoying and tedious work virtually no-one want to do (hail
> mickeyl for doing that for the lists i'm subscribed to).

My main problem with the spam is this: large amounts of spam on the
mailing list make it look amateurish and unprofessional.

I have been happily clicking on my "file as spam" button for months now.

But since the issue was brought up, I thought I would give my vote
towards making it subscription only to eliminate it entirely.

I understand completely that maintaining a subscriber base would be a
challenge and would take time and effort away from doing important
development work (and nobody wants that!).

If there is nobody to do it (I am certainly not volunteering), then
there is simply no one to do it.

Thanks for explaining the semi-official position.  It is super-easy
for all of us to say "Yes, please do this," but another thing entirely
to actually make it happen.

-Jason

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