[spambayes-dev] require subscription?

[Tony Meyer]

> I wonder if anyone else is willing to reconsider the decision 
> to operate this list without requiring subscribers to 
> register?

Requiring registration for spambayes at python.org would break the ability to
automatically submit a problem report that sb_server offers (and Outlook may
offer in the future).  I don't have the data, but I suspect that a great
many of the people that report bugs on spambayes at python.org are not
subscribers, and they are the people that need help (and many of them would
probably find subscribing difficult, given that what else they find
difficult), and we need to know where the bugs are to try and fix them.

In addition, there are different levels of response to a non-member posting:
accept (as now), hold, reject, discard.  Are you advocating hold or reject?
If it's hold, then that means that someone (the way it's set up now, Tim,
TimS, or Barry) needs to go through the held messages and approve/reject
them.  I doubt any of those people have the time or inclination to do that.
I could find the time, but it would be time that I would otherwise spend
answering questions, which I think is more worthwhile.

All of this is in FAQ 5.5, BTW:

<http://spambayes.org/faq.html#why-does-the-spambayes-python-org-mailing-lis
t-get-spam>

> I don't feel that the Mailman subscribe/confirmation process 
> would really scare anybody away,

I do.

> as virtually all lists do 
> this, and for exactly the same reason.  Why give spammers 
> this free multiplier?  I'm sure the other list participants 
> would understand and be happy for the spam reduction.  At the 
> very least, there is no excuse for having Spambayes-DEV not 
> require registration, but I would argue for requiring it for 
> both lists.

I wouldn't care if spambayes-dev required membership in order to post, but
I'm definitely -1 for spambayes at python.org.  OTOH, does spambayes-dev even
get any spam?  I don't recall any offhand (and tend not to bother filtering
any of the spambayes lists).

=Tony.Meyer