Re: Proposed change for subscriptions...
Steve Lamb <grey@dmiyu.org> said on Sun, 12 Mar 2006 08:46:38 -0800:
> Michael Marsh wrote:
> > Because subscribing to the list *is* a barrier, and
> > *will* prevent a good number of people from asking their questions.
>
> No, it isn't. It's called being responsible.
>
> > Open posting is *good*. Yes, I get spam because of it,
>
> These two statements are contrary. Open posting is *BAD*.
>
> > but most of that is caught by Gmail's spam filter.
>
> Irrelevant. It makes the list a ready-made spam vector. Unlike you I
> get a good portion of my spam through the list. What makes it so incidious is
> that I have to search out that spam so as not to poison my filters.
> Considering I don't find it a woefully heavy burden to scan headers and delete
> subjects that aren't relevant to me (oh, the horror, about 5m a *day* on this
> oh so busy list) It makes it harder on me and weakens my own defense against spam.
Whereas, if I search for my email address on google, I find the single
most common occurence is on debian mail list archives held by various
private parties (there'll never be anything I can do about private
archives). Spammers spiders come along, pick up my email address, and
this explains why I get so much more spam that everyone else from my
centre (so same form of email address, and we've had the address for
the same length of time). When I found this out several years ago, I
investigated other methods of posting to debian lists.
Fortunately, I found that it was gatewayed to linux.debian.*. Now, it
turns out that discussion groups work best on something that was
designed for discussion groups, so USENET is a great place to read
debian lists instead of email. But furthermore, with the application
of a simple script, I can post using any address I want as the From
address. Since I still want to get private responses, but don't want
to get endless spam to my address for everymore, I use the version I
display above: <name+destination_and_datecode@domain>. For a limited
time, emails to the address end up in my INBOX. Thereafter, they end
up in my spam folder, but nicely colour coded, so when weeding
through, its a bit easier to find stuff that looks like it may not be
spam.
Now, try doing that when you have to subscribe to post. My single
biggest issue with the debian mailing lists are the archives storing
my email address, and me not being able to set my own email address on
a temporary basis. Now, the solution is not to stop everyone from
private mirroring (because you can't enforce this), nor is it to do
the braindead replacement you see in so many places such as google
<spit> groups: blah@foo gets replaced with b...@foo, or <redacted> or
whatever, since that attacks useful items like X modelines. It's
letting people post using an address that they may not necessarily be
able to actually read, and thereby not be able to answer the challenge
response subscription. If I had to subscribe with a temporary address
each time my temporary address changed, then I wouldn't bother. I'd
use it as an excuse to finally change from debian to openBSD.
Reply to: