xml-dev - LISTRIVIA (Spam and other things)

[Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>]

Please can we avoid discussion of spam on XML-DEV for whatever motives.  A
primary weapon against spam is ignoring it.  It's easy to get sidetracked.

After a few private mails the position as I understand it is:
	- XML-DEV (and another list that Henry moderates) had the "who" facility
enabled, so that membership of the list could be requested.
	- I believe that Henry intends to disable this to avoid a spammer being
able to access the distribution list (at least without cracking into the
machine/list).
	- this means that people will no longer be able to read the name/address
they were subscribed under and this may make unsubscription more difficult.
	- (un)subscribe costs Henry a lot of effort, and it is extremely boring
and tedious. We owe a great debt to him for this labour underneath the
surface. Anyone (un)subscribing should do as much as possible to lighten
this load. [I get a number of people writing to me to ask to unsubscribe,
so I expect the number that Henry gets is larger.]

I suggest we adopt the great battle cry of the late great John Major :
"wait and see". If the situation continues at present it's bearable - we
all get spams/MMFs most days. My main concern is that (a) the workload gets
increasingly heavy anyway and (b) more moderation of some sort is required.
Personally I favour moderation at subscribe-time, rather than post-time if
it really has to come to that, but I hope it doesn't.

	P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg

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