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

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 12:04:54AM -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> 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.

Yup.  It's just like edge providers enforcing source address spoofing
prevention.  It doesn't cure DDoS attacks, but it makes every other
kind easier to trace... and for that matter, it makes DDoS's easier to
trace, not that you have the time.  :-)

> > 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.

No.  It's definitely a judgement call here how far the analogy ought
reasonably to be expected to stretch.

> >> 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...

<sigh>

> > 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 still enablers, regardless of their conscious intent...

> 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.

Yeah, the difference between theory and practice is much greater in
practice than in theory.  <sigh^2>

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

   "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?"
     -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk")