Mailing List Policy

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CentOS-Virt 6 Comments

Hi all,

right now the CentOS-virt@CentOS.org mailing list is set up such that all posts by people not subscribed to the list are auto-discarded. This is in line with all the other lists and I propose that we keep things as they are. The reason for this is that traditionally the amount of spam that CentOS lists are getting was very high.

I am not sure this holds for CentOS-virt@CentOS.org. It may be worth trying a change to see whether it would be manageable to use moderation of posts by people not subscribed to the list.

Input very welcome

Regards Lars

6 thoughts on - Mailing List Policy

  • My gut says to leave the configuration as it is now. If folks aren’t interested in participating in a discussion (by adding themselves to the list), they shouldn’t be allowed to send something to the list.

    Hopefully I didn’t miss the point of your original email. ;)

  • I just wanted to make sure we discuss this questions. The volume on the list isn’t currently such that joining the list would create too much noise Lars

  • xen-devel/xen-users and linux-kernel both have mechanisms for non-members to post. In the case of the Xen messages, mail from addresses not seen before get put in a moderation queue; we have some volunteer moderators who go through the queue every day or two, letting real mail go through (and whitelisting the address so further mails from that address can go through).

    This incurs an extra cost (people having to go through the moderation queue), but it lowers the barrier to participation significantly:
    someone can ask a question, report a bug, or send a patch without having to go through he hassle of signing up for a mailing list they don’t plan on actually interacting with long-term.

    I think moderation / whitelisting is worth a try. If it just doesn’t work, we can always go back.

    -George

  • Hi,

    If you go that way I would recommend using the SpamAssassin integration for Mailman, with a very aggressive setting. I’ve seen community lists getting 100x more spam in the moderation queue than ham going to the mailing list – when you have to fetch one ham message from 150 spam it quickly becomes easier to just check the “drop all messages awaiting moderation” checkbox.

    Cheers, Dave.

  • Hi Lars,

    I think that makes sense.

    I just found out about the list last week, though – it might be worth announcing the list as the place where Virt SIG discussions happen on CentOS-devel?

    Thanks, Dave.