Future: Safe Auto-moderated Announce List

I see the basic "how do I let the right people post to this announce list automatically" question often enough to indicate that there is a perceived need.
Let's put digital signature technology to work.
For some post 2.1 release (and probably patchable into 2.1 by suitable people), extend the privacy options to include:
List (two columns...duplicate senders probably allowed for the case of a work key and a home key or an assistant's key for authorized forging, or whatever): Automatically post messages from these senders PROVIDED they are digitally signed using the key listed for the sender.
Checkbox: Automatically and silently reject (with logging) any message not from a listed sender and properly signed.
Variations (not silently rejected, etc, if desired...but sending a rejection message gives the would-be rogue poster information).
It seems to me that this can be turned into a suitable solution to the auto-moderated announce list desire, without a whole lot of coding.
I didn't see such a feature request on SourceForge...if I missed it I apologize (I've spent no more than 15 minutes driving SourceForge).
--John (whose site has about 5 lists which would benefit from this feature)
OA (Obligatory acronym): SAMAL
John Baxter jwblist@olympus.net Port Ludlow, WA, USA

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, John W Baxter wrote:
I see the basic "how do I let the right people post to this announce list automatically" question often enough to indicate that there is a perceived need.
OK.
Let's put digital signature technology to work.
I think we'd get quite a bit of bang for the effort just adding a checkbox to the admindb page saying "and add this sender to auto-approve list?" So it's easy to moderate a person's messages as long as you want, and then also easy to say "yeah--approve this and all future posts from this person.")
-Dale
Dale Newfield <Dale@Newfield.org>
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -T. Roosevelt

"JWB" == John W Baxter <John> writes:
JWB> I see the basic "how do I let the right people post to this
JWB> announce list automatically" question often enough to
JWB> indicate that there is a perceived need.
JWB> Let's put digital signature technology to work.
With MM2.1, this will only be necessary if you don't trust the From: header. I'm not saying I do trust it -- we all know it's easily forged, but I am saying that the basic mechanisms you talk about are already in place. We'd simply need to add a way to manage and consult the PKI.
I'd classify this as a useful feature for MM3.0, once we have a consolidated user database. Then the users could add public keys to their records and Mailman could consult them against the signatures for authentication of the From: address.
JWB> Checkbox: Automatically and silently reject (with logging)
JWB> any message not from a listed sender and properly signed.
JWB> Variations (not silently rejected, etc, if desired...but
JWB> sending a rejection message gives the would-be rogue poster
JWB> information).
This is turning into a common pattern, so it's likely something I'll refactor in future versions. You basically want to do something like this:
see if the message matches some criteria (e.g. from a known non-member, from a moderated member, etc.)
if so, then decide on an action:
approve the message right now; send on without further moderation steps
let pass to subsequent moderation steps; we haven't ruled this message out, but we haven't actively ruled it in either
hold the message for moderator approval
- send a notification to the sender, or
- don't send a notification to the sender
- reject the message outright, bouncing it
- this implies sending a notice to the sender
- discard the message without further notification (but w/ logging probably).
I've really only started to mull over in my mind the way to implement this. As usual, the sticky point is in designing a useable web gui for customization.
"DN" == Dale Newfield <dale@newfield.org> writes:
>> Let's put digital signature technology to work.
DN> I think we'd get quite a bit of bang for the effort just
DN> adding a checkbox to the admindb page saying "and add this
DN> sender to auto-approve list?" So it's easy to moderate a
DN> person's messages as long as you want, and then also easy to
DN> say "yeah--approve this and all future posts from this
DN> person.")
My time machine is working well then! Check out MM2.1's admindb summary page. You can by default turn on the moderation flag for all new members, and decide on an action for a moderated member (see above). If you decide to hold messages from moderated members, you'll see an extra checkbox on the disposition gui asking you if you want to turn off the member's moderation flag.
This will be the way to quarantine new members until they can be trusted. You'll also be able to do things like ban somebody from subscribing from a list.
-Barry
participants (3)
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barry@zope.com
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Dale Newfield
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John W Baxter