To clarify a bit, based on followup mail.
AD hat was on in previous message, same here. I am not speaking for
the full IESG, however.
It was not my intent to imply that if messages did not get forwarded
to one list, but did on another, that this somehow was OK and couldn't
be censorship. It is not OK. The messages at issue should have made it
out onto namedroppers.
Regarding namedroppers mail processing:
1) first run through spamassassin. Mail that is rejected here is not
archived, as the number of such messages is large. All mail sent to
mailing lists on the server hosting namedroppers is run though
spamassassin, so this is not a namedroppers-specific
procedure.
Strictly speaking, the above is not permitted by the published spam
filtering guidelines. The issue isn't the use of spamassassin in front
of the list, but post-processing of rejected messages. The current
guidelines call for a human to manually approve the improperly flagged
rejections. I have started a process to see what can be done to
address the problem of rejections from spamassassin not being reviewed
by a human when sent to namedroppers.
In the case at issue, however, I do not believe that the use of
spamassassin is the problem with the messages at issue. The
explanation I find most likely is that the messages were deleted in
haste rather than forwarded as they should have been after having been
flagged as possible spam since they came from a non-subscriber.
Of course, it is also not possible to prove intention in this case.
Given that I have seen no compelling evidence that suggests a desire
or intent to censor anyone on the list, I chose not to read such an
intent in the cases at issue here. But of course, there is no way to
prove one way or the other.
Thomas