Subject: mailman

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 14:06:10 -0500

Hi folks!

I have a question and a comment this afternoon...

First, my question before I get everyone excited.  I have two mailing
lists on ietf.org (one of which is actually an IRTF list, but ...).
Lots of stuff gets caught up in the filters.  On one of my lists the
stuff that gets caught and I throw away still gets thrown in the
archives (the IMRG list).  On the other list that is not the case (TCPM)
and only posts that get forwarded to the list end up in the archive.
I'd like the latter behavior on the IMRG list.  I poked through both
configs and couldn't figure out that there was any difference or any
obvious knob to control such things.  Does anyone know how I can fix the
IMRG config to not pollute the archives?  (I am *sure* I am dense and
just overlooking something.)

The second thing is related.  And, I am sorry ... I don't mean to beat
this particular horse.  But, what the hell are we going to do about the
spam on IETF lists?  I don't even care if we can't solve the global
problem.  But, one of the aforementioned lists received about 200 spams
in the last month.  And, the rate is growing.  It's largely caught in
the "not a member of the list" filters that are setup.  But, me
processing this chud by hand with that awful mailman interface is not
scaling well.  I.e., for the IMRG list I just cleared out 100 messages
because I am so far behind.  And, I am not even very careful.  If the
sender is unrecognizable and the subject line is a little spammy or
gibberish I chuck the message.  I rarely actually look at the messages
themselves.  Here is a proposal... can we:

  * make the summaries that are sent out daily listing all the messages
    that are pending indicate which of those is new since the last
    reminder was sent?  or, as far as I am concerned it can just list
    the new arrivals along with the total pending messages.

  * and, then, set a timeout on the messages -- i.e., if I haven't done
    anything about a message in 2-3 weeks it would just get discarded

??

I can still go poke through messages if I want.  And, I can still
monitor things to make sure legit stuff isn't getting held up and go
take action as necessary.  But, I don't have to go manually reject
everything.

**And**, BTW, this is just putting our finger in the dike.  If the spam
trends continue it is going to get to the point where even scanning the
list of spams for author/subject is going to be a huge pain.  We need
some tools.  We don't need perfection.  But, we need something
reasonable.  Please.

Thanks for listening.

allman

--
Mark Allman -- ICIR -- http://www.icir.org/mallman/

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 14:23:51 -0500

Following up on Mark's comments - I've observed one other problem, which is
spam sent directly to the archive e-mail address.  This spam doesn't show up
in the non-subscriber filter or on the list, but is permanently captured in
the list archive.

- Ralph

---

From: Christian Hopps <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 10:16:13 -0800

> Hi folks!
[...]
> scaling well.

Please, can't we just turn auto-reject (of non-list members) on? I went 
back and read some from the wgchairs archives when I became co-chair, 
and the only argument I could see in favor of manual intervention was 
that we might lose some interesting idea. Is this really the only 
reason we haven't turned auto-reject on?

To make matters worse the interface for discarding spam is cumbersome 
and thus annoying. If manual intervention will continue to be required 
we should improve the interface.

Thanks,
Chris.

---

From: Derek Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 15:53:47 -0500

Christian Hopps <[email-masked]> writes:

> Please, can't we just turn auto-reject (of non-list members) on? I
> went back and read some from the wgchairs archives when I became
> co-chair, and the only argument I could see in favor of manual
> intervention was that we might lose some interesting idea. Is this
> really the only reason we haven't turned auto-reject on?

There are REAL times when cross-posting is necessary.  For example,
I've helped out on a number of various WGs in a security-advisor-like
capacity but really didn't want to (or need to) subscribe to the list.
Or there have been discussions that have crossed the boundaries between
multiple working groups, where various participants from both groups
have been involved.  Requiring them to subscribe to both lists for
the relatively short duration of a cross-wg thread seems pretty
overbearing on the wg participants.

I receive enough mail as it is; I don't need to add the mail to a WG
I'm not really interested in just so I can cross-post a thread when it
becomes necessary.

> we should improve the interface.

If this is your issue, perhaps this should be fixed.  Have you tried
Harald's mailman.pl spam-discarding script?

> Chris.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       [email-masked]             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant

---

From: Christian Hopps <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 13:56:44 -0800

> overbearing on the wg participants.

This seems like a good reason. I'm not sure if all the mailing lists 
are hosted @ietf.org now, but if they were we could allow for 
situations like the above by allowing posts from anyone subscribed to 
any ietf mailing list.

> Harald's mailman.pl spam-discarding script?

This is my main issue. For example if all the held mail were delivered 
to me and I could use my email program to accept, reject or discard I 
would be happy. I wasn't aware there was a helper script floating 
around.

Thanks,
Chris.

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 18:06:04 -0500

> I went back and read some from the wgchairs archives when I became
> co-chair,

Maybe I could have saved some everyone some time and my hyperbole if I
had done that.  But, I didn't think of it and/or even think that there
might be archives.

I was a wg chair a couple years ago and have (sigh) just become one
again.  From this fresh perspective it'd be really nice to have a list
of pointers that we could point new or returning wg chairs to.  I'd be
happy to try to come up with such a list unless there already is one and
I somehow missed the memo.  Thoughts?

> we should improve the interface.

I was pointed to ....

    http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/MAILMAN/index.html

which allows one to review the summary emails that are sent and then
feed that email to this script to delete all the junk in the queue.

(Of course, for the less common case when you need to approve something
then it requires more work.)

allman

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 18:12:03 -0500

> There are REAL times when cross-posting is necessary.  

Absolutely, I agree we do not want to turn on any form of auto-rejecting
non-subscribers and did not mean to ever suggest that.

I did suggest auto-rejecting after a timeout -- but that was with the
belief that the chairs would look at summaries and just let things
expire that were junk and go and approve things that were not junk.  I
think that johnh's mailmain script that makes the nuking easy would be
much preferred to a timeout system.

> I'm not really interested in just so I can cross-post a thread when it

Is it true that one can subscribe to mailman lists and then turn off
delivery and still post without waiting on approval?  That would seem
like a nice approach to lessen the approval load on the WG chairs (and,
quicken the time required to get the posts forwarded).  I have also
started adding folks to the "allowed posters" list when I forward their
posts.  I assume this is reasonable behavior that also helps in this
area. 

allman

---

From: Rob Austein <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 20:40:05 -0500

At Sun, 14 Mar 2004 18:12:03 -0500, Mark Allman wrote:
> delivery and still post without waiting on approval?

yes