No subject
Tony Barry
me@Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
Mon, 28 Oct 2002 13:38:30 +1100
Linkers
We seem to have covered the settings for the new software. I
summarise some of the discussion below and what I am going to do. I
seem to have got away with settings that were generally agreed with
and I shall ask ANU support to transfer the membership over.
My comments are prefixed ">>>>>"
>>>>> THERE WILL BE PROBLEMS! Those of you who are posting from
>>>>>addresses other than the one you are subscribed from will have
>>>>>your mail moderated and bounced to me as mailman will not
>>>>>recognise you as a member of the list. I WILL SORT THIS OUT with
>>>>>you individually.
Membership approval and posting
---------------------------------
>What would be great is if messages from non-subsctribed addresses
>were moderated whilst subscribed addresses are automatically
>linked.Stephen Loosley <stephen@melbpc.org.au>
>i'm not really in favour of putting individuals on moderated status -
>either they have behaved badly enough to be asked to leave (or even
>kicked out) or they haven't. moderated status is enough of a PITA that
>they generally won't bother posting much and end up leaving - they can't
>participate freely in the flow of conversation, as all their posts are
>delayed by hours (at best), days or even weeks for a moderator to get
>around to approving it.
>
>there's also something unpleasantly fascist and two-faced about it -
>it's basically saying "you can say whatever you like as long as i agree
>with it".Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
>>>>> Postings from non-members will go to me for moderation. I have
>>>>>no intention of setting
any individual to "moderated" status unless overwhelmingly requested
by the list
General Options
---------------
Do not send a copy of a member's own post
NO
>Imo, the general/default setting should be yes. - Irene Graham
><renelk@libertus.net>
>Yes. Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke@xamax.com.au>
>>>>> I have changed this to YES. You will NOT get a copy of your
>>>>>post to the list
Subscriptions
-------------
>I'd argue strongly against requiring approval of any sort - confirm
>should be enough. Link is a public list, as such people shouldn't need
>to be "vetted" prior to being allowed to subscribe. Ash Nallawalla
><nospam@easyrsvp.com>
>>>>> This raised some discussion mainly related to blocking spam.
>>>>>Other settings will assist with that so I will be shifting the
>>>>>settings to CONFIRM only after the list settles down. I will
>>>>>keep the APPROVAL option on in the short term ie for the moment
>>>>>I will need to approve new members.
Privacy options
---------------
>You might look or ask about banning non ANSI/English character
>sets???Jan Whitaker <jwhit@primenet.com>
>>>>> I will look at this.
>>Who can view subscription list?
>>
>>
>> List members
>>[Options are Anyone, List members, List admin only Individual can
>>suppress their address]
>
>You might want to set this to Admin Only. There are programs
>which will join a mailing list and harvest the e-mail addresses.
>glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au
>>>>> Unless there are OBJECTIONS I will turn off access to the list
>>>>>members addresses knowing that I will open myself up to requests
>>>>>from people who want to see them ;-)
> > Show member addrs so they're not directly recognizable as email addrs?
> >
> > Yes
> > [And that's why it says me at tony-barry.emu.id.au all over the
> > place. Spam bots looking for "@" won't find them.
>
>
Where? I see nothing but harvestable Tony Barrys.
>>>>> looks like this rule does not apply to the archives
Bounce processing
-----------------
>this also means that it will take 14 days of soft bounces before an
>address is disabled ... both very generous periods. You could probably
>drop it to less than that, say 3 or 4. Eric Scheid
><eric.scheid@ironclad.net.au>
>>>>> Once the list has been going for a while I will fine tune this
>>>>>and reduce the settting until I see the onset of problems.
> > At the moment anything over 100k bounces to me for moderation which
> > will filter out anything extremely silly.
>
>You might want to drop that limit a little - and raise it again if there
>are too many false positives.Chris Maltby <chris@sw.oz.au>
>>>>> I've dropped this to 50k and will keep an eye on it. Link on
>>>>>majordom was set to 40k
Archiving Options
-----------------
>>> I suggested members access only
>I think that the high signal-to-noise ratio of Link, the relative
>absence of HTML emails, and the fact that a lot of what we discuss is of
>global and potentially lasting influence means that it would be best to
>have the archives open to the public. I occasionally hear from non
>list members, including from outside Australia, writing to me about
>something I wrote on Link in months or years past. Robin Whittle
><rw@firstpr.com.au>
>I agree. It should cut down on the email address harvesting
>problem. Howard Lowndes <lannet@lannet.com.au>
>I have no problem with closed archives at all. Should reduce some
>of the spam address harvesting. Jan Whitaker <jwhit@primenet.com>
>I get a small trickle of referrals to my web sites from the link
>archives (11 so far this month), so people do seem to be using them.
>Danny Yee <danny@anatomy.usyd.edu.au>
>I think your idea is a good one Craig - we have not suffered too
>much spam from Link but if it helps to stop address harvesting then
>yes! let's do it. The members only option I think is too restrictive
>though depends if people want their privacy protected - which is
>another conversation entirely! Linda Rouse <linda@databasics.com.au>
>>>>> There appears to be no clear consensus on this. For the moment
>>>>>I will leave the archives open but I am unsure whether ANU has
>>>>>them set so that they can be indexed by robots. I am trying to
>>>>>find out. We will need to discuss this further.
Content filtering
-----------------
>>>>> Thgere were a number of helpful messages in relation to this
>>>>>which I hope bit by bit to apply. First up I want to block
>>>>>executable attachments!
>I would strongly favour a setting that stripped (or just bounced) HTML
>encoded messages. I have two reasons for this...
>
>1) a large amount of spam is html encoded - bouncing html would
> therefore increase the spam hardening of the list.
>
>2) I (and many others) deliberately do not use html enabled MUAs
>
>By setting a text only policy for the list (state this in the
>'subscription' system) people are PREVENTED from sending us long, html
>encoded emails (the bulk of which is the encoding rather than the actual
>content) - and we get better spam hardening too.hartr@interweft.com.au
>Anyone sending html should be sending text too (i.e.
>multipart/alternative) so is there any reason to not include text/html
>in the list of attachments to be removed? Almost all of the html-only
>email I've ever received has been spam.John Clarke <johnc@vastsystems.com.au>
>As long as it's not abused, attachments can be useful. (Then again,
>I'm on a broadband account so I suppose those on slower links should
>have their concerns aired before I'm considered.)"Frank O'Connor"
><foconno1@bigpond.net.au>
>If you're happy deciding about letting something through, block and
>review is probably best. E.g. I just sent a message of pertinence
>to the Link list that came to me with an attachment. In this case I
>sent to you for approval/reposting anyway. If you're happy with
>that, go for it!Jan Whitaker <jwhit@primenet.com>
>>>> There was lack of agreement on blocking text/html messages. At
>>>>the momrnt I have mailman set to convert html to text. The point
>>>>was made by many that most spam is in html and therefore it
>>>>should be blocked. Other measures however are likely to
>>>>substantially restrict spam so this may not be a problem. I will
>>>>start by restricting more worrisome content such as executables
>>>>and see how we go from there.
-------------
I will ask ANU to swap link over as soon as it is convenient for them to do so.
Tony
--
--
phone : +61 2 6241 7659 | mailto:me@Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
mobile: +61 4 1242 0397 | http://tony-barry.emu.id.au
----------
For Link list information see http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/link/