Thank you (was: Re: [spam subject elided] (fwd))

[Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de>]

Dear Alex, dear Dave, dear everyone.

Alexander Wirt - 04.12.18, 07:47:
> On Mon, 03 Dec 2018, Marvin Renich wrote:
> > * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 15:21]:
> > > How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks? 
> > > 1
> > > month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years?
> > 
> > The correct answer is "much longer than 25 years".
> 
> He should at least wait until he gets its facts right. Afair/afaik
> there never was any offer to help or constructive help we received
> from him.

First off: Alex, thank you very much for your persistent and continued 
dedication to serve the project and all of us discussing on Debian 
mailinglists as a listmaster. I imagine that it can be challenging to 
deal with negativity like this.

Now some random thoughts about this:

Regarding spam there for me there is one most important rule: Never 
*ever* reply to spam, and never *ever* do so publicly. Why? In case of 
answering privately you tell the spam sender that your mail address 
exists or in case of forged from address to tell that to some other 
random account. In the case of responding publicly you *highlight* the 
spam.

I am highly successful with a Postscreen and rspamd based Spam-filtering 
setup and I did not see the original spam at all. My mail server just 
refused to receive it. Replying to the spam publicly just caused me to 
see it as well and so was in dis-service for me. Recently I did not even 
need any additional rules after having blocked whole domains of a mail 
provider with dubious domain names after they insulted me for sending 
them abuse complaints. But its mostly just my mail, I do not have the 
responsibility for anyone else. So I can afford to make it more 
aggressive and take a greater risk regarding false positives.

While I see rspamd as a very viable alternative to my previous Spam-
filtering setup, I am currently focused on other things than to offer 
help to the listmasters. But then I accept and am grateful for all I 
receive. Also I see the challenge to change the an existing setup, 
especially when it is as large-scale as I'd expect the existing setup 
for these mailing lists.

That written: I also complained to listmasters about a certain repeated 
spam mail that appeared on almost every Debian mailing list I was 
subscribed to and was not acted upon. However I learned that I am much 
more at peace of mind if I just block it first with my mail server… and 
then notify listmasters in a friendly and constructive way. Cause then I 
do not give my power away and make my own peace of mind dependent on 
what listmasters may or may not do about it.

Listmasters volunteer. They owe me *nothing*. They have a life outside 
of volunteering as a listmaster.

All they give, they give freely without asking anything in return.

The most appropriate reaction to this in my eyes is gratefulness.

So again: Thank you, Alex, thank you, all listmasters for your time, 
your dedication and even that you put up with all the negativity that 
people who complain (including me as I did it) send towards you. I 
commit to stop complaining and to start helping where I can, and even if 
its just by reporting the spam mail via the web interface.

Of course I know not everyone has their own mail server, but Dave, if 
you are proficient with anti spam measures and run your own mail server… 
why are you even affected? My anti spam measures, and I am certainly not 
an expert in this, blocked the original mail just fine. So if you do not 
like to spend the time to help listmasters, how about you just fix your 
own mail server not to accept mails like this in you are so proficient 
with anti spam measures?

Thanks,
-- 
Martin