[Mailman-Developers] Interesting study -- spam on posted addresses...

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On 2/18/02 7:15 AM, "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

> Yup, and so does every web page on the net, and it will keep happening
> until other things outside our control change markedly -- either on the
> network provider TOS enforcement side...

Oh boy. Now I get to sound like your mother.. "If the other boys are going
to jump off a bridge, does that mean you should?"

I can't fix the universe. I think it's silly to try. But you gotta start
somewhere, and I think it's important to do what you can to fix the part of
the universe you control. Because if you say "hell, it won't get fixed until
someone else fixes it", doesn't that simply make it easier for all those
"someone else"'s to do exactly the same?

You gotta start somewhere. You won't stop it yourself. But if everyone made
some improvement, they all pile together into a big improvement.

> Damn right it does.  You're gonna be in the movies, you gotta expect to
> sign the occasional autograph at dinner.

I agree. But that also doesn't mean you should expect your home address and
phone number to be published in the national enquirer.

>> and redirecting it to /dev/null, which, if I ever definitely catch him doing
>> so, will get him in trouble...
> 
> But that's not, and I concur with your appraisal.

And that is why I'm forced to write a formal T&C (terms and conditions),
which all my admins are going to be forced to agree to follow, or their
lists will be shut down. And if they don't follow it, their lists will be
shut down. Because I've tried the "we're all mature adults here, and I
expect you'll do your job" and found that it works -- almost all the time.
And the times when it doesn't are simply not acceptable. So I'm going to
have to go through all this, just so there's no ambiguity in what's expected
and what's allowed FOR THE ADMIN, so I can thumbscrew two or three into
cooperation because treating them like mature adults didn't work. And the
other 99% of my admins get taken along for the ride, since I have to be
consistent here, if only to save myself from the next re-org...

> Look up "enabler".  This is an old argument.  I don't know that I
> concur that reducing the pain threshold of people who might otherwise
> have an incentive to do *useful* work on spam reduction is a good
> idea.

These people have real jobs. Running mail lists is a secondary task (at
best). "finding and killing spammers" is nowhere to be found. It's not
enablement. If it were me, it'd be enablement. For them -- it's a pain in
the butt and disincentive to do their real work. The people you're trying to
turn into enablers never were and never will be part of the anti-spam war.
They're collateral damage -- and I don't agree with you that "sharing the
pain" will do anything but make them pissed and bitter. And I don't see that
as an advantage.


-- 
Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.chuqui.com/)
Will Geek for hardware.

The Cliff's Notes Cliff's Notes on Hamlet:
    And they all died happily ever after