Re: namedroppers mismanagement, continued

> > > > > On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 09:55:49 -0800 (PST), Randy Presuhn 
> > > > > <rpresuhn(_at_)dorothy(_dot_)bmc(_dot_)com> said:
Randy> As someone who has maintained a couple of WG mailing lists for
Randy> several years, I'd object to the imposition of such a
Randy> requirement.  The amount of spam, especially *large* (megabyte
Randy> or more) viral messages, directed at WG mailing lists makes
Randy> keeping all the trash a highly unattractive proposition.

I think the proper solution here is to use proper tools rather than to
impose another burden on the list administrators.  Mailing management
has come a long way in the last few years.  The easiest package I've
seen for administrative purposes is probably the mailman package,
which is being used by a very very wide range of Internet groups.  As
an example, all of the SourceForge mailing list software is managed by
mailman.

I strongly encourage the use of a more intuitive mail package like
mailman.  I've managed many mailing lists with it, ranging in size
from a few people to > 5000 and I must say that it makes
administration easy.  Moderated lists, or subscriber-only lists are
more easily taken care of because list administrators just have to
click on a button that says "reject" or "accept" or "discard".  The
nice thing about the reject action is that it sends back text to the
user saying what the problem was and how they can likely correct it.
IE, the complaint that started this huge thread (dropped problems as
opposed to a properly worded response going back) are generally taken
care of by the software, not the administrator, which is important.
It's so easy to use that my Dad can and does use it, who knows nothing
about SMTP, sendmail, aliases, unix, postfix, ...  I'm sure Randy Bush
will have no trouble with it.  It's only disadvantage is that it's
heavily web based, which will probably make a few people groan.
However, it would be rather trivial to write a mail-based,
script-based, or other wrapper around it if that was the only problem
with it.

IMHO, it's long past the time that the IETF should have a centralized
mail management system where lists can be (not forced to be, of
course) centrally created and yet still managed by individual list
authors.  The ops area has been doing this for a while, but I think it
makes sense for the main organization to host this instead if possible
(yes, I do realize that a server and bandwidth would have to be
donated to the cause).  It's all the small administrative issues like
this that detract us from real work on real protocols.  Let's fix this
at the global level, please.  Sourceforge hosts > 51,700 projects most
of which have multiple mailing lists associated with them.  We should
learn from their experiences.

-- 
Wes Hardaker
Network Associates Laboratories