[Mailman-Developers] before next release: disable backscatter indefault installation

[Cristóbal Palmer]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 03:28:22PM -0800, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> 
> The Defaults.py setting for DEFAULT_GENERIC_NONMEMBER_ACTION has been
> Hold from the beginning.

We've recently set this to 3 (Discard) for new lists. Please explain
the argument for keeping the default as Hold for the long term. I
believe it should be Discard, but can think of at least one argument
for keeping the current default. I'd like to hear development team's
line.

> Perhaps you are thinking of the respond_to_post_requests setting.
> 	 
> Do you object to any response at all, or just to responses that include
> the original message text? If the former, then you must object to DSNs
> from MTAs as well. If the latter, that is planned to be addressed in
> Mailman 2.2.

Even without the original message text a response is a problem. In the
case of backscatter, the many novice users are still likely to tag the
message as spam, which will cause the mailman install to be
blacklisted if enough users from the same provider take this action.

I'm happy to discuss ibiblio's experiences with being blacklisted
off-list.

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal Palmer
ibiblio.org systems administrator