William Anderson <neuro@well.com> wrote:
>If I want to post to a list, I expect to have to subscribe to it - it's no
>big deal.  if the list becomes rapidly off-topic to your needs, unsubscribe.
>It's not rocket science!  Closing the list except to those subscribed
>reduces the possibility of spam, and makes people think longer and harder
>about possibly unnecessary cross-posting between lists.

[from a message I sent on the hp300 list several weeks ago...]

Justin Tripp <justin@ee.byu.edu> wrote:
>Also, can the netbsd mailing lists be setup to not allow non-list users to
>send mail to the list?

Sigh... this gets asked every time a single spam message manages to
squeak through the (rather tight) filters on mail.netbsd.org...

The short answer is "no".

The explanation is that there are a large number of users (like me) who
read the lists by way of web archives, mail2news gateways, and other
similar methods, especially those who read a large number of the lists
(all the netbsd lists together total about 350 articles a day, quite
a mess to wade through in a single incoming mailbox...)

Forcing these people to subscribe in order to send a simple message (and
then possibly immediately unsubscribe if the group in question is a high
volume group and they don't want to be swamped) is not a good policy.

And, just for your edification... I have never seen a second spam from
the same address come through the netbsd mailing lists.  The NetBSD mail
admins are very diligent in adding spammers' addresses to the incoming
mail filters.

jdarrow

-- 
John Darrow - Senior Technical Specialist               Office: 630/752-5201
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