[Mailman-Users] Automatic deletion of posts by non-members of a list

[Peter C.S. Adams]

Thus spake Brad Knowles <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>, circa 5/26/2006 2:03 AM:
> Think about spam in general.  Which is worse?  Dealing with large
> quantities of spam to try to find the relatively small amount of
> legitimate mail?  Or throwing everything away that might potentially
> be spam, possibly including important messages from your boss, your
> spouse, your parents, your children, your co-workers, prospective
> business partners, etc...?

I'm not following. My lists accept all mail from subscribers. If they're not
subscribed, they can't post. If the messages are important, people will
notice if they're not distributed.

> But then maybe you've got different kinds of mailing lists where
> you don't really care about the content and where the posters don't
> really care about the content, and no one is going to get upset if
> some messages get thrown away.

Most of my lists are for people who are subscribed. On the very rare
occasion that a message is from a different email address, they contact me
and ask me where the message went, and I either whitelist their other
address or add them as nomail subscribers. This has happened 3-4 in four
years on about 20 lists.

Meanwhile, I often get dozens of messages per day helpfully telling me that
my Mac is infected with SoBig or some other Windows virus and is sending
copies of itself out, as an example. "From" lines are routinely forged,
making "you are not subscribed" messages far less useful than they could be.

I'm not saying this is right for everyone, but neither is setting lists to
reject.

-- 
Peter C.S. Adams       (617) 287-7118
Director of Information and Communication Technologies
College of Public and Community Service, UMass Boston
"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one;
enemy to none." -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack