I am sorry, if I sound harsh, but I think this chain of mails is becoming more
concerning than the amount of spam one receives. Could we put an end to it?
James M Galvin wrote:
Keith,
Your NAT analogy is weak, very weak, at best. It's opening premise is
flawed, as is this entire discussion of mail list filtering, because it
confuses policy with implementation.
The IETF has a policy of "openness" for all its mailing lists. The
problem is most of the argument against filtering defines openness as
"all messages shall be distributed." This is false.
Every IETF mailing list has a charter, a known purpose for its use. It
is entirely reasonable and legitimate to reject all submissions that are
outside the scope of the charter. If we can not agree on that point
this whole discussion is pointless.
Implementation is wholly separate from policy, and a primary concern for
the list maintainer. A list maintainer needs to figure out how to
identify messages that are within scope and ideally would like to
automate that process. I would assert they can do this without anyone's
approval or guidance. The only issue anyone in the IETF can have with
that is if the list maintainer has a skewed sense of "within scope" or
if whatever process they use generates false positives. But you can not
know this until after the fact. We do so many things in this
"organization" on the basis of "subjective judgement with after decision
peer review," (less so now than even just 5 years ago but still) why
should this be any different?
Mail filtering is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is a tool, a
legitimate tool, that when used as part of a larger solution to the
problem of maintaining the integrity of a mailing list is extremely
valuable.
Restricting the posting of messages to subscribers is not bad, it is an
excellent choice for the first line defense against off-topic messages.
The issue is whether it is the only solution employed.
Messages from non-subscribers need to be reviewed to determine if they
are within scope. In a worst case this review is done manually but it
doesn't need to be. There are a few (I mean less than 5) additional
technological criteria that can be applied that will correctly review
95% or more of the non-subscriber messages. This minimizes the manual
work.
I know this because I do this and have been doing it for years. I have
a 100% success rate at keeping spam off mailing lists and no complaints.
The total volume of email I deal with far exceeds the needs of all the
IETF lists combined. This is not rocket science.
Furthermore, I don't see how the occasional 24-48 hour delay in getting
an occasional message distributed is bad. So many people have this
idealistic view of email immediacy. Have you ever really looked at the
Received: lines for messages distributed to the main IETF list?
Messages to me typically take about 6 hours to get delivered but I've
seen delays as long as 18 hours. And the delay is *not* at my end.
Jim
On Mon, 21 May 2001, Keith Moore wrote:
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 18:00:02 -0400
From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc: moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu
Subject: filtering of mailing lists and NATs
it occurs to me that most of the methods that have been proposed
for filtering spam from mailing lists have a lot in common with NATs.
in both cases, the proponents say (in effect) "if it works for me and
for my small set of test cases, it must be okay to impose this on
everyone. if some legitimate traffic is excluded by my filters, they is
of no consequence - they should be willing to jump through whatever hoops
that I believe are appropriate. and if people have to abandon practices
that they find useful in order to to get around my filters, that is of
no consequence either, because they do not need to be doing those things
anyway"
Keith
--
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The only way to solve a problem is to look at it in the face.
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