Re: Ways to reduce calls to Validity BLs (was Validity (return path blocklist))

On Tue, May 06, 2025 at 12:52:11PM -0400, Bill Cole wrote:
> In what way it is harmful for those rules to be left in place, given that SA
> disables 'blocked' DNSBL servers when it encounters them.

well, for one, it needlessly wastes postmaster's time analyzing and
trying to troubleshoot them for many SA installations (i.e. actively
managed ones)

> I'm not a fan of Validity and I don't even believe that they have been
> honest here or have acted in good faith. But whether or not we change the
> default rules   is not based on how trusted the Validity folks are or even
> how useless their lists have become.

Why not? 

That sounds exactly as a reason for changing what list SA uses and advertises.
"reputation by association" is a thing.

> I'm always eager to make changes that actually improve SA. I am much more
> uneasy about making changes that are entirely cosmetic.

How about at least setting their score to 0 (and mentioning it in
next release notes)?

That should:

- disable running the rules and tagging messages (and thus wasting
  time troubleshooting them), and at the same time

- would NOT be breaking meta rules that users might have made
  (it would just be like VALIDITY never detected a spam), and

- users could also EASILY set the scores to some non-zero number if
  they wanted to continue to using it

-- 
Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.