Steve Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said on Sun, 12 Mar 2006 08:46:38 -0800: > Michael Marsh wrote: > > Because subscribing to the list *is* a barrier, and > > *will* prevent a good number of people from asking their questions. > > No, it isn't. It's called being responsible. > > > Open posting is *good*. Yes, I get spam because of it, > > These two statements are contrary. Open posting is *BAD*. > > > but most of that is caught by Gmail's spam filter. > > Irrelevant. It makes the list a ready-made spam vector. Unlike you I > get a good portion of my spam through the list. What makes it so incidious > is > that I have to search out that spam so as not to poison my filters. > Considering I don't find it a woefully heavy burden to scan headers and > delete > subjects that aren't relevant to me (oh, the horror, about 5m a *day* on this > oh so busy list) It makes it harder on me and weakens my own defense against > spam.
Whereas, if I search for my email address on google, I find the single most common occurence is on debian mail list archives held by various private parties (there'll never be anything I can do about private archives). Spammers spiders come along, pick up my email address, and this explains why I get so much more spam that everyone else from my centre (so same form of email address, and we've had the address for the same length of time). When I found this out several years ago, I investigated other methods of posting to debian lists. Fortunately, I found that it was gatewayed to linux.debian.*. Now, it turns out that discussion groups work best on something that was designed for discussion groups, so USENET is a great place to read debian lists instead of email. But furthermore, with the application of a simple script, I can post using any address I want as the From address. Since I still want to get private responses, but don't want to get endless spam to my address for everymore, I use the version I display above: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. For a limited time, emails to the address end up in my INBOX. Thereafter, they end up in my spam folder, but nicely colour coded, so when weeding through, its a bit easier to find stuff that looks like it may not be spam. Now, try doing that when you have to subscribe to post. My single biggest issue with the debian mailing lists are the archives storing my email address, and me not being able to set my own email address on a temporary basis. Now, the solution is not to stop everyone from private mirroring (because you can't enforce this), nor is it to do the braindead replacement you see in so many places such as google <spit> groups: [EMAIL PROTECTED] gets replaced with [EMAIL PROTECTED], or <redacted> or whatever, since that attacks useful items like X modelines. It's letting people post using an address that they may not necessarily be able to actually read, and thereby not be able to answer the challenge response subscription. If I had to subscribe with a temporary address each time my temporary address changed, then I wouldn't bother. I'd use it as an excuse to finally change from debian to openBSD. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
