Re: [Fsfe-uk] The recent Nigerian mail

[Gareth Bowker]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 11:50:48AM +0000, Martin WHEELER wrote:
> > Serious point: when we move the list, some spamming
> > filters might be in order :-/
> 
> Couldn't agree more.

Is filtering necessarily the best way to do this? IMHO just disallowing
non-subscribed addresses from posting would solve 99% of spam issues.
Otherwise, we need someone to keep an eye on the messages being blocked, to
make sure that there aren't genuine messages inadvertantly being blocked.
Another alternative is to run the messages through SpamAssassin and just
leave the score in the headers of the mail, so people can set their own
thresholds. After all, if we're trying to raise awareness of FS then we don't
really want to alienate people who "don't know better" and have their MUAs
set up wrongly being told that the message they just tried to send here was
bounced, or even worse, simply never hearing anything. 

I've recently moved ISPs and I couldn't even *subscribe* to debian-uk as
their mail server refused to allow anyone without reverse dns to send mails
there. My ISP took almost a month to sort this out :/ If I'd have been a
newbie, just trying to find out more about debian, the reply would have
confused me and I'd have probably just gone and found a different distro.

We need to be as accessible as possible - even if that means getting the
occasional spam. Surely that's better than not receiving an e-mail from
someone who could really help our cause because the filters were overly
sensitive?

Cheers,

Gareth