Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) [Private] comp.dcom.sys.ascend

William T Wilson <fluffy@dunadan.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Matt Holdrege wrote:
>> Thus my point earlier about filtering the mail. If you don't want to see
>> spam and cross-posting, keep subscribed to the mail list. The mail list
>> can be configured to reject those. 
>
>Maybe it's just me, but I don't have so much faith in the mail filters. 
>How do you filter "spam"?  It is a hard thing to put your finger on.  It's
>like pornography, you can't define it but you know it when you see it. But
>you can't tell that to a mail filter!  [ ... ]

Filters for mailing lists are different than filters for your mailbox
since it's a group participation medium that can have defined rules, etc.
There are mailing lists that only allow subscribers to post. Mailing
lists that don't let you Bcc the list (i.e., has to be in To/Cc). Mailing
lists that don't allow crossposting to other mailing lists. Mailing
lists that don't allow HTML-formatted posts, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

>                         [ ... ]   What about crossposting?  Maybe you
>can filter crossposts, if they are obvious, but what of a spam mailer that
>posts the message to every group individually instead of all at once?

That's not a crosspost, so there's not much point in discussing it in
that context. Whatever filtering would be done on that would be the
same as whatever filtering is done now on the mailing list. I have no
idea if there is any, but Matt Holdrege seems to be implying that
there is (or would be).

>Or what if the user simply crossposts to comp.dcom.ascend and
>comp.dcom.cisco?  Should that be filtered?  [ ... ]

If the rules for the news2mail gateway are that all crossposts should
be filtered, sure.

>                              [ ... ]       What about the lusers that
>simply post to everywhere in comp.dcom?  Do we want to set a policy about
>whether these should be filtered or not?  [ ... ]

I don't know where "want to" enters into it... since you have to
set a policy for the gateway (even if it's just set to whatever the
default is for the gateway software), then you are already setting a
policy about this. You could allow crossposts to one other comp.dcom.*
group, and/or treat generic groups like comp.dcom.isdn differently
than sys groups for the calculation, etc.

>                                [ ... ]   Where do you draw the line? 

Wherever you please, and move as needed. Remember, this is just
determining what posts to the newsgroup would find their way to the
mailing list. If the folks here stayed here, then all it would be
doing is determining what additional posts you would see. If you
don't want any cruft, then err on the side of being too careful. If
that becomes a problem for some reason, move the line a bit.

>I still don't like the newsgroup idea.  Simply make the mailing list
>prominent on the support page, anyone that can't find that should probably
>look harder anyway before asking for help!  :)

Hm. Anyway, a pointer to the search archive, etc. would also be a good
idea.

What I'd like to see is for us to cut through the FUD and deal with
whatever people actually "don't like about the newsgroup idea". I find
it hard to believe, for instance, that your biggest problem with the
idea is that, if we decided to have a news2mail gateway for the
newsgroup, it would have to have a policy. I mean, the mailing list
-already- has a policy. ;-)  Anyway, if we can focus on the real concerns
maybe we can put an end to the discussion a bit quicker. I'm reading
this gated over to a local newsgroup anyway, so I get a crude form of
threading whether the rest of you do or not. ;-)  I just want to get
this settled once and for all and that means airing and discussing all
the main points. If we don't do that it'll just keep going on and on.

Some folks have mentioned:

Having to check more than one place
The mailing list will wither away
The news2mail gateway might let Usenet cruft through

Any others?

Matt
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