[e2e] latest spate of cruft postings to e2e

[Lynne Jolitz]

I just want to thank Joe for doing a really thankless job. It is so hard these days to run an open posting list and not have spam creep in occasionally. No one ever thanks the list moderator for all the spams s/he actually keeps out, because they are never seen. But I've noticed a reduction in spam on this list over the last few years. It's not perfect, but given the increase in spam in the same time period, I think Joe's been doing a pretty good job.

A few observations:
- Whenever the quals on posting tighten up, I immediately see missives posted by very annoyed subscribers about how upset they were at having to wait for moderator approval or getting a bounceback for an obviously pertinent message. Usually there's some keyword that is checked as also being common in ads. So there's a bit of an art to balancing this. Lately I haven't seen a lot of these complaints, so maybe a balance has been achieved?
- If you look at the HTML email the clever spam people avoid cleartext or break up the words into innocuous ones. One could translate any HTML file into text files first and then examine them, but that would incur an additional cost in overhead. Is this worthwhile?
- Finally, I've noticed that certain kinds of ads (related to male prowess and hair rejuvination, for example) are prevalent on this list after some hot online debates. Perhaps someone is a jolly joker? 

Thank you Joe for doing your best. I've seen this list get better, and though I know one can always improve, I think you're doing a good job.

Regards,
Lynne Jolitz.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: end2end-interest-admin at postel.org
> [mailto:end2end-interest-admin at postel.org]On Behalf Of Joe Touch
> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 2:45 PM
> To: Perry E.Metzger
> Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org
> Subject: Re: [e2e] latest spate of cruft postings to e2e
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Perry E.Metzger wrote:
> 
> > Joe Touch <touch at ISI.EDU> writes:
> > 
> >>I appreciate that whitelisting is harder on the receive end of a list
> >>(you can still do it, and will end up accumulating some of the list
> >>anyway). The content filters we use are not perfect, but neither is
> >>whitelisting.
> > 
> > It has been years since a spam went to one of my mailing lists run on
> > a "subscribers post only" basis.
> 
> But it hasn't been that long since I tried to post to one and had to 
> subscribe to post. At which point I gave up, since I don't always want - 
> or need - to subscribe to every list to which I might want to 
> participate briefly.
> 
> That's the behavior we're trying to avoid by the list configuration.
> 
> > Can you say the same for your mailing
> > lists?
> > 
> > I appreciate that you will never change your position, however, and I
> > don't want to add noise on top of spam.
> > 
> > Perry
> 
> 
>