Re: Spam

[davidw@dedasys.com (David N. Welton)]

Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@dekkers.cx> writes:

> And what if an e-mail address of the whitelist is included in the
> From: address? If you take a mail archive for example, the address
> of the mailinglist and addresses in the white list can be on the
> same page. And closing mailinglist archives isn't a practical
> solution.

I'm not sure how the software the ASF use handles this.  I don't get
spam on those lists, though, and that's a pretty important point.
It's something Debian has not been able to accomplish, yet.

> > This is something that is currently in place, and *works* for the
> > ASF.

> That something works for the ASF doesn't mean that it works for
> everybody.

I guess, but I don't really see the big difference.  I think it makes
a lot of sense to look at a functional setup that works, and see what
can be taken from it, don't you?  Isn't that one of the points of
participating in the free software comunity?  Sharing successful
ideas?

> > In any case, I think AJ's solution is pretty good and is worth
> > pursuing.

> If you mean moderating (I haven't read the original post, only the
> debian-project posts), I don't think that works. People should spend
> time making Debian better instead of moderating.

Well, yeah, in an ideal world, but we are trying to fix the spam
problem.  Like I've explained about 5 times already, it doesn't take a
lot of time.  Much less, certainly, than writing email telling us how
the world should be...

Also, it doesn't require anyone with special skills.  Anyone who wants
to take the time to help debian (and there are lots of people) could
perform this role.

Anyway, read Anthony's post - it's the best idea so far.

> > > How do we solve the problem then? I think the answer is easy,
> > > just make some good law against spam. Punish the people who send
> > > spam. That would *solve* the problem, not work around it. So
> > > instead of just the next message discussing about spam, talk to
> > > the political persons in your country.

> > > And although the answer is easy, I'm aware that getting such a
> > > law isn't that easy. But that doesn't make impossible.

> > Uh, let me know how it's going 10 years from now.  Until then,
> > I'll take a more practical solution.

> Out of experience I can tell that spam filtering is the most
> practical solution speaking short term.

Out of reading your email, I can tell that you have experience with
one solution, that probably works well on an individual level.

Spam filtering needs maintaining, and may generate false positives.  A
lot of people seem to have doubts as to whether it will work at a
project level.

> Talking to politicians is the most practical solution if you want to
> talk about long term solutions.

Great, but it will take a long-term time scale...

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David N. Welton
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