On 22-Feb-06 Ted Harding wrote: > It seems, looking at the headers of recent mails to > the list, that postings to the groff list are being > delayed at lists.gnu.org by 6-12 hours, typically > over 9 hours. > > Is this (as I hope) a temporary phenomenon? > > Best wishes to all, > Ted.
With Miklos's and Werner's messages of Feb 22 07:24 GMT distributed to me 18:24 GMT Feb 22 07:28 GMT distributed to me 18:41 GMT the delays at lists.gnu.org are now at least 11 hours. Looking at the list archives at http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-groff/2006-02/index.html I see that the archived messages for the last 7 days are 95.5% spam (some of which is of the well-known groff speciality). Specifically: Spam Real All Wed 22 Feb 2 0 2 Tue 21 Feb 25 0 25 Mon 20 Feb 24 0 24 Sun 19 Feb 16 4 20 Sat 18 Feb 12 2 14 Fri 17 Feb 30 0 30 Thu 16 Feb 18 0 18 ---------------------------- 127 6 133 Does this have anything to so with the delays? Is lists.gnu.org choking on this stuff? I am concerned about this, but admit that a solution is not entirely trivial. I run a couple of mailing-lists (man-lug and linux-users @lists.manchester.ac.uk), which are of course targeted by spammers but at a somewhat lower level (on average less than 5 spams/day each, but up to 12 or so at times). The lists are configured to accept postings from subscribers only. All other postings are notified to me for approval or other action ("discard" in the case of spam). This involves a certain amount of work (though not much): notifications which refer to spam are easily identified and I leave these alone till I feel like dealing with them. Maybe once or twice a week a genuine message comes through from a non-subscribed address (sometimes from an outsider with an interesting and relevant communication, sometimes from a subscribed user posting from a non-subscribed address). When that happens, I then visit the list admin webpage, approve the genuine message[s], and take the opportunity to flush away the spam. Also, both lists have their archives accessible to subscribers only (password required). This may help to reduce the spam somewhat, but I am not sure about that (though it certainly helps protect list-members' addresses from spambots). I'm not sure about the desirability of making the groff list subscribers-only, given that one would like to promote open acess! But things can reach a level where the issue has to be faced. Probably restricting reader access to the archives is very undesirable. The anti-spam effect is likely to be minimal, while the impact on open access would be severe. I note, however, that the groff messages which I actually receive are (except for those few notorious ones "sent" by a few of us, myself included) are non-spam. At least, that is the case where there is "[Groff]" in the subject. But the spam in the archives is otherwise 100% without "[Groff]". So maybe there is already a mechanism in place for Werner (or someone) to check out suspect messages; but in that case why do they get into the archives? Or maybe some of the multitude of spam which I receive (but never look at) is also sent out by lists.gnu.org but without ["Groff]" in the subject. I'm a bit perplexed by my observations. Just raising some thoughts for consideration! (And hoping that the gridlock eases enough for discussion to begin to flow again). Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 22-Feb-06 Time: 20:06:28 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff
