[H-SASIG] SysAdmin SPAM

[James Iseppi]

Hi All,

Just to clarify the history a bit. sysadmin at humbug.org.au for many  
years (well before my time in the club) was an alias to the HUMBUG  
sysadmin's and was the primary point of contact for all sysadmin  
requests. There was no list, there was no archive, it all just went to  
the various people (exactly the same as exec). As part of the move to  
excalibur it was re-constituted as a mailing list to provide easier  
management of the members, and to provide an archive, which I hoped  
would add accountability.

I find it concerning that we are directing all private requests to  
single people (both the secretary for exec, and the librarian for  
sysadmin), where there is absolutely no accountability about whether a  
message was received. I can certainly see the point of creating the  
sasig and admin lists to allow for more public discussion, but exec  
and sysadmin should still be used as the primary contact points for  
the club, otherwise we are constantly relying on one person to ensure  
everything is actioned and there is also no record of what happened.  
Openness is one thing, but accountability is also important, even if  
it can't be open.

Back to the issue of the spam, if the spam is not making it to the  
list then I really don't see the issue. You as list owner will have to  
put up with exactly the same spam whether the list is open or not. I'm  
pretty sure mailman is configured to accept all inbound emails except  
where the list is not listed in the to or cc, or where there are too  
many addresses listed in the to or cc. These will be the messages  
you're being spammed with by mailman, which from what I've been able  
to determine cannot be stopped without modifying mailman. If the  
messages are being directed to list-owner@ then you've got no chance  
of blocking them using mailman alone, since you are the owner.

So in summary I think making the lists even more private than they  
currently are is a bad thing and think that they should remain  
accessible to people who are not members of the list.

James

On 15/01/2010, at 7:25 PM, Raymond Smith wrote:

> On 15/01/2010, at 17:48, Greg Black <gjb at yaxom.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2010-01-15, Russell Stuart wrote:
>>
>>> I have had my fill of SPAM from the SysAdmin list.
>>
>> Me too.
>
> Huh. This is weird because I am not seeing much spam myself.
>
> Greg are you also a mailing list owner / moderator for the sysadmin  
> list?
>
> I guess it is possible that google is simply dropping the messages,  
> it maybe I am just more spam tolerant.
>
>
>>> Given the main contact point is now for the SysAdmin's is now this  
>>> list,
>>> and contact point for confidential information is the librarian,  
>>> does
>>> anybody have a problem with me only letting subscribers post?
>>
>> I am fully in favour of subscriber-only posting -- I believe
>> lists that allow anybody to post are idiotic in this day and
>> age.
>
> I agree when a list is actually a list, but sysadmin was a contact  
> address long befoe it was an alias...
>
> If sysadmin is really just a spam trap (and I still don't understand  
> why Russell and Greg ate seeing heaps of span and I am not), then we  
> would be better off just deleting it and bouncing mail back to sender.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Raymond
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