Re: MAILING_LIST_MULTI=-1

On 2025-03-14 at 02:46:06 UTC-0400 (Fri, 14 Mar 2025 02:46:06 -0400)
Jared Hall via users <[email protected]>
is rumored to have said:

> SA 3.4.6
>
> I see this negative scoring rule in many spams:
>
> MAILING_LIST_MULTI=-1

Spamples appreciated.

> Seems counter-intuitive but I could not find a score for this rule 
> anywhere.

Rules without explicit scores are scored by default at 1 for spam rules 
and -1 for 'nice' (ham) rules, with adjustments made by the RuleQA 
process.

> Is this just an issue with version 3.4?

The default scores have existed since at least 2.x. MAILING_LIST_MULTI 
was created a few years ago to address a FP pattern of well-known 
standards-conforming "traditional" mailing list software (ezmlm, 
Mailman, Lyris,etc) sending wanted mail to eager subscribers and getting 
labeled as spam. It has helped reduce that problem substantially.

The rationale (beside the fact that RuleQA affirms its utility) is that 
tools designed for conversational mailing lists usually present too much 
of a setup and operational burden for spammers, relative to 
designed-for-spam tools. A key high-level goal for SA is to keep 
traditional consensual mailing lists (e.g. like this one) viable in an 
environment where mailing many copies of the same message to many users 
is almost always unwanted.

And I am 100% serious about wanting samples of spam hitting 
MAILING_LIST_MULTI or ANY "protective" rule. We are shameless about 
providing "special treatment" for specific sites and/or senders to get a 
~80% rule like MAILING_LIST_MULTI to 90%+.


-- 
  Bill Cole
  [email protected] or [email protected]
  (AKA @[email protected] and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
addresses)
  Not Currently Available For Hire