[Mailman-Users] mail loops: list-request and vacation messages

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On Monday, June 25, 2001, at 08:47 PM, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:

> One approachable suggestion: put a governor on the number of messages
> any one address is allowed to post to a list per time period.
>

Could the new queueing system be set up with a timed-backoff delay? 
you'd have to keep a fair amount of state, but the minimum time between 
postings for a given user is, say, 30 minutes, and every time they post 
it doubles? (30, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours...). this sort of thing gets 
gnarly fast, though, since oyu have to start tracking when the first one 
came in and age it out of the system, or find some other way to keep 
from really honking off your legitimate, prolific posters.

You're already doing much of what you can without being annoying and 
generating false positives -- the X-BeenThere, for instance. If 2.1 
doesn't do it, keeping track of message-id's and locking down repeated 
ones is a good idea. So is building a suite of keywords "out of the 
office", "on vacation" that lock to admin approval.  Rate limiters, 
though, are double-edged bananas. think about what happens on these 
lists when we get into a burst of discussion or development activity -- 
do you really want your own posts, or JC's or Dan's held simply beacuse 
they've sat down with a cup of coffee and answered ten pending questions 
all at once? You run the risk of honking off the common posters and the 
people who answer questions, or shutting down discussions that get 
interesting, simply because they spike messages. Exactly (IMHO) what you 
don't want -- everytime something gets interesting, a nanny that says 
"don't care if you're having fun, you're posting too much..." (grin)

(we could, I guess, get into my position that e-mail is a horrible way 
to do this sort of stuff... After all, on a typical discussion list, 
what's usually the first thing that happens after a bunch of people get 
into an enthusiastic discussion? People coming out of the woodwork to 
tell them to shut up, because they're generating too many messages... 
What a great medium, where good discussions are so often seen as a bad 
thing... snicker)





--
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome <http://www.chuqui.com>
[<chuqui at plaidworks.com> = <me at chuqui.com> = <chuq at apple.com>]
Yes, yes, I've finally finished my home page. Lucky you.

You know, I Remember When I Used To Speak In Capitals, Too. It's 
addictive.
It also encourages people to poke sticks at you. Justifiably. (chuq, 
1992)