[Mailman-Users] Privacy Options Filtering
Stephen J. Turnbull
stephen at xemacs.org
Tue Jun 4 10:25:47 CEST 2013
Mark Sapiro writes:
> On 06/03/2013 03:21 PM, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
> > Could there be an easier way? I don't want to run the risk of
> > list owners overdoing this, but some spam usernames are super
> > obvious. Like freecredit or onlinepoker.
>
> Learn simple regular expressions. There are lots of good references, and
> in their simpler forms, they're not much different from 'globs'.
>
> Any 'simple' UI that attempted to translate say 'a string that matches a
> part of the email address to the left of the @' into the corresponding
> match would probably be unwieldy with too many options and would still
> not have the power of simple regular expressions.
+1. There could be an easier way, but I don't know what it is. The
only real alternative would be to optionally allow globs, but that
would require additional syntax in a single box or an extra box. Two
boxes strikes me as an attractive nuisance, and it would catch some
power users, too.
> > The moderation panel click feature will add ANY email address to
> > the filter lists upon request. There is no check to see if it is
> > a legit email address or not. But if it adds a bad address, it
> > breaks the filter. The filter does still work, but it may not
> > work for all the good addresses. I'm not sure if it works up to
> > the bad address and then stops.
Cyndi: I don't understand what you mean by "breaks", especially given
Mark saying it works. Mark doesn't miss much, but there's always a
first time. :-)
> OK. This is a bug. I have entered it in the tracker at
> <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/1187201> and I will fix it, but
> I'm not yet sure how. And the filter does continue to work for all
> addresses, even the bad ones.
Well, is it a bug? It seems to me that depends on whether the setting
is REJECT (it's a bug, although only wasting the MTA's time AFAICS) or
DISCARD (not a bug). If it's DISCARD, surely the admin intends to
nuke that spammer in the future, too? I don't know if this argument
applies to evil characters in the address but it should be true for
invalid domains.
> > I have had this happen many times and there is no warning at all.
> > The only way you know is if you try to edit the filter box list.
> > Then when you save changes, it erases all of your changes and
> > gives you an error message. The error message I got today said
> > there was a bad email address and then it listed ALL of the
> > addresses (and expressions) in my list. Very not useful.
This is Mailman's way of letting you know that you're abusing the
system. ;-) Yes, I know you don't think you have a choice. :-( I
don't think it would be terribly hard for us to do better though; see
below.
> > I would like to see the bad email error message come up when you
> > ADD the email address. If it's done directly on the Privacy page
> > then leave it exactly as it is now. But please add a check to
> > the moderation page so you can't add a bad email address without
> > at least being warned about it (better if it's rejected).
>
> That's my inclination for the fix. I.e. don't add the address to the
> filter and say why, but what else should or shouldn't be done. E.g.
> suppose this is one address out of 5 to be added from 5 posts. Do we
> abort the whole transaction, do everything else anyway or something in
> between.
I would say Mailman should (1) add all the valid addresses, (2) give
an error message specifying any addresses Mailman rejected, followed
(3, in the same page) by a confirmation message saying which addresses
were added. Also, it might be useful to *prepend* the new addresses
to the list or regexp.
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