Re: [spam subject elided] (fwd)

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2018 at 11:56:22PM -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> Context, it's always important.  The offerS have been given by several
> people, over several years, across several methods.  I know Dave, I have
> a reasonable idea of how Dave would have make his first, second, third,
> fourth, fifth, and sixth offers to help.  I can also imagine that it
> probably took Dave at least several years, of offering *free* help,
> before he blew a gasket at the continuance of a problem that he is very
> keenly aware of how to solve.  I, on a parallel plane, have been
> advocating for improvements, and complaining about the spam problem, for
> several years now too.  I'll make a prediction, nothing will improve and
> obvious spam will still leak through b.d.o.  

As it turns out, this prediction was entirely accurate.  Senior experts
in the field such as Jim and Dave and myself have repeatedly offered to
help, and the response has been (pretty much) excuses and whining.

Meanwhile, spam that is trivially easy to block permanently continues
to flow through numerous debian-* mailing lists.  (By "trivial" I mean
can be blocked with one line of typing.  I've collated a list of about
175 domains that should be permanently blacklisted in the MTA because
they've repeatedly hit multiple mailing lists since 2015.  It took less
than five minutes to create that list.  This is of course not a total
solution but it would take a substantial bite out of the problem, and
that, in turn, would make it easier to focus on what's left.)

The negligence and incompetence on display here is damaging the Debian
project -- and there's really no excuse for it.  Running mailing lists
that are nearly entirely free from spam is a well-understood practice, and
anyone who can't handle that should step aside in favor of those who can.

---rsk