Subject: update on spam in mailing list archives

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:20:44 -0500

There are two things to say about what is happening.

First, we have the set of changes that are necessary for the preferred 
fix but we still have some additional testing we want to do before 
putting it in to the production system.  Steve Young and I will be 
doing this on Monday.  If all goes well we'll schedule a "cut-over" 
time and do it.

Ideally this will be "behind the scenes" from the point of view of list 
subscribers but we'll know for sure on Monday.  If it needs to be 
visible then everyone will be notified and we'll explain in more detail 
what needs to happen and when.

One thing we're being really careful about is to make sure there's no 
loss of email.  The fix itself is pretty straightforward but you know 
how it is with any large production system.  Better safe than sorry.

However, since we know that folks don't want to wait even one more day 
let alone 3 days or more, the second thing to tell you is that we have 
installed a "quick fix".  It may not catch everything but it should 
make a significant difference.  This also gives us the benefit of not 
feeling rushed on Monday, so we can finish the testing in a careful way.

The quick fix is a filter that is very similar to what Barry Lieba had 
proposed and others expanded on.  Steve was able to setup a "catch-all" 
such that messages that are being "discarded" are not really discarded. 
This will need to be checked manually once we put the real fix in 
place, but that shouldn't affect anyone unless you happen to notice 
that a message you sent is not in the archive.  That really shouldn't 
happen, we've tried to be extra careful here, but if you should notice 
anything please do report it to [email-masked].

Separate from all of this will be the cleanup of the existing archives. 
There will be more to say about that next week.

Thanks,

Jim