Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists

From: "Loughney John (Nokia-OCTO/PaloAlto)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:28:38 -0700

My situation is worse. I would like TDMA back.

sent from my Nokia E65.

--- original message ---
From: "ext James M Galvin" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists
Date: March 25, 2008
Time: 1:18:44  PM

There are over 200 subscribers on this mailing list and only 10 
people have commented on the TMDA issue.  That's not a lot, even by 
IETF standards.

By my count, 4 people said they wanted TMDA back, 4 people said 
they were coping just fine, and 2 people didn't really say how they 
felt personally.

This is not a call for consensus, per se, all I did was ask for 
folks to comment how the SPAM problem looks to them on their 
mailing list.  Nonetheless, I thought the numbers were interesting 
since they were so evenly split.

Just for completeness, I would not try to "classify" the silent 
majority as either for or against TMDA.  This is a case where the 
silent majority gets to remain "happy" regardless of which choice 
is made.

Clearly zero SPAM is a lot better than a few SPAM.  I think we can 
all agree on that.  TMDA, or any kind of whitelisting or 
challenge-response system, will ensure zero SPAM for all practical 
purposes, so I'm pretty sure folks will want that if given a choice.

You'll be pleased to know that Henrik Levkowetz has been looking at 
a TMDA configuration that may serve our needs.  He's been working 
with Glen Barney (AMS Technical Director) and, if successful, we'll 
be able to install one instance of TMDA and use it for all mailing 
lists, instead of one instance per mailing list.

No promises just yet, this is just an update, but if it can be made 
to work I'm sure Henrik and Glen will figure it out.

In the meantime, if anybody else wants to comment on what the SPAM 
problem has looked like to them over the past 6 weeks I'm still 
interested.  You can comment to me directly if you prefer.

Thanks,

Jim

-- On Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:49 PM -0400 James M Galvin 
<[email-masked]> wrote regarding TMDA and working group mailing 
lists --

> It is true that TMDA is not currently installed in front of
> working group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the
> cut-over because we learned about it very late in the process and
> it is quite burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own
> declaration, is not designed to be used in front of mailing lists.
>
> However, even without TMDA, we do have much improved SPAM
> filtering in place.  It should be the case that no mailing list
> is getting more than a few SPAM messages per day.
>
> Is there any list that is getting more than a few, where few is
> less than 10, SPAM messages per day?  If so, let's hear about it
> here but also send a note to "[email-masked]" so it can be
> investigated.
>
> Understand that NSS setup TMDA on a separate server expressly
> because it was burdensome to set it up and maintain it.  We are
> trying very hard to avoid that burden, if we can.  We would like
> to make sure we are doing everything we can to reduce the SPAM
> burden, ideally without TMDA.
>
> It would help to have an understanding of what folks are really
> experiencing.  If we need to find a way to setup some kind of
> global whitelist, supported by TMDA or some other
> challenge-response system, then we'll certainly figure out
> something and get that done.
>
> How has the SPAM problem been for folks over the past 6 weeks or
> so since the cut-over?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
>

---

From: "Stephen Hanna" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:37:13 -0400

Yes, my situation is marginally worse and I agree that the
current situation wastes a bit of my time each day on spam
sent to my WG. I would rather have TDMA back if that's possible.

Thanks,

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of Loughney John (Nokia-OCTO/PaloAlto)
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 4:29 PM
To: ext James M Galvin; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists

sent from my Nokia E65.

--- original message ---
From: "ext James M Galvin" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists
Date: March 25, 2008
Time: 1:18:44  PM

Thanks,

Jim

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:18:23 -0500

OK, it seems spam is again getting worse.  At the beginning of the week,
I had 2-3 spams caught per-day.  Today, I am up to 16 caught by the
mailman admin interface.  I expect that this will continue to rise, and
I have to say that pending to this is just not a good use for my time.

John