[Molvis-list] Drop in use of this list

[Dan Bolser]

Timothy Driscoll wrote:
> On Sep 7, 2006, at 10:58 AM, Dan Bolser wrote:
> 
>> Eric Martz wrote:
>>
>>>  His work consists mostly of deleting spam, thereby sparing us  from 
>>> all receiving it -- so I'm sure you appreciate him too!
>>
>>
>> How much spam gets through the members list? (Or is this an 'anyone  
>> can post' list?)
>>
> 
> howdy,
> 
> this list is live-moderated (which means a moderator must approve  every 
> message before it is broadcast, and every subscription request  before 
> it is activated). our policy is that only subscribers are  allowed to 
> post. occasionally, we will allow a relevant post from a  
> non-subscriber; however, this is strongly discouraged because it is  
> extra work for the moderators.  especially since...
> 
> the amount of spam sent to the list has risen dramatically in the  past 
> few months.  fortunately, such messages are manually identified  and 
> discarded before they hit the list, so nobody is the wiser  (except the 
> moderators, who like to complain about that sort of  thing ;-).
> 
> 
> warm regards,
> 
> tim


So if I understand correctly, the spam spoofs the identity of people on 
the list in order to get round the 'members only' restriction?

If this is the case, you could simply ask people to moderate their own 
posts by generating an email to the sender allowing them to confirm that 
they really did want to post something to the list. If the reply address 
of the email is different from the apparent sender address, then you can 
simply kill the mail and send a notification to the reply address.

This approach would have the 'bonus' effect of making people aware that 
their email address was being spoofed.

I was under the impression that such email spoofing was incredibly rare, 
but my local spam filters may be keeping me naive of such list 
associated spam.

Anyway, the point I am coming round to is that I don't like moderated 
lists ;-)

I think they put people off posting. I am sure there are 10's of people 
ready to reply immediately saying that they are not put off posting by 
moderators, but is is just those people who are put off who are the 
least likely to reply.

Maybe this extra layer of security would only reduce posting still 
further, but clicking 'reply/send/delete' would not be much harder than 
clicking 'delete' on the existing 'your email is in a queue' auto reply.