[oc] Re: Seamless Functionality

[Andreas Bombe <andreas.bombe@munich.netsurf.de>]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2001 at 05:58:58PM +0200, Damjan Lampret wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> lately spam is becoming really a big problem.

I counted over the time I am subscribed and it's 26/344 mails being spam
(including duplicates).  I wouldn't call 7.5% a big problem, certainly
not one that justifies extreme measures.

> What we are thinking right now
> is to change status of this list from open to closed. Meaning you can post
> to this mailing list only from email address that you used during
> subscription. In most cases this is ok and it would also eliminate 95% of
> spam email.

This of course means that only subscribers can post (the "sending from
different account than subscribed" problem can be solved with no-mail
subscriptions), and:

1. No one can legitimately post without subscribing first.
2. Discussions with a person not subscribed to the list can not be cc'ed
   to the list.

The former means that bug reports can not be sent to this list from a
mere user of the OC stuff, unless bug reports are not to be sent to
this list or every user is required to subscribe.  This may be less of a
problem for this list than for other (software) lists, since most
posters here are developing the code and there aren't many users of it
yet.


One important thing to keep in mind is that this list is a
communications platform, and unless we're crippled by spam it's not a
good idea to preemptively cripple ourselves.  The ultimate in crippling
would be to make this list moderated, as someone in this thread
suggested (it would be acceptable if the moderator has a response time
of < 5 minutes, 24 hours a day).

There are better, but probably more labour intensive to implement, ways
of reducing spam.  Mostly filtering spam out based on suspicious header
fields.  Simply dropping anything that does not have cores@opencores.org
in either To: or Cc: (what legit reason would there be to Bcc: this
list, anyway?) and anything without a From: line would already cut out
about half of the spam I've seen on this list.

Beyond that is the possibility to scan for typical spam subjects and
probably public blacklists like MAPS RBL.  Really big lists like
linux-kernel seem to work well with that policy.

> I'm also thinking to change all email on the web site from
> email@opencores.org_NOSPAM to email (at) opencores.org. This is now very
> common on some known web sites that host mailing lists (for example GCC web
> site uses this trick). Should we try to do this? However this method of
> tranforming email address might be confusing for someone who sees this for
> the first time.

That might actually be a sensible thing to do, it's also quite common
and people shouldn't get too confused by this.  However, I guess that a
"_NOSPAM" appendix is too easy for automated address harvesters.

-- 
Andreas E. Bombe <andreas.bombe@munich.netsurf.de>    DSA key 0x04880A44
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