Fedora List content, guidelines and antispam

[Gustavo Seabra]

On 5/25/05, Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 09:39 +0800, John Summerfied wrote:
> > I've been perusing my mail logs and I see mail, some from fedora-list,
> > being declined for these reasons:
> > 1. Encoded bodies
> > 2. Non-roman character sets
> > 3. being called Peter Whalley
> >
> > 1. As most experienced list members prefer plain text, I don't
> > understand the need for base64-encoding of bodies. The only purpose it
> > serves that I know about is to attempt to subvert mail filters. I figure
> > if you don't want me to filter on content, I don't want your email.
> 
> Fair enough. Base64 encoded plain text goes straight to the bitbucket on
> my system too, except for mailing list messages, which are all
> whitelisted.
> 
> > 2. Non-roman character sets implies the mail's not written in English or
> > any of the other European languages. If anyone writes to me it better be
> > in English because my French hasn't seen much practice since I completed
> > school 40 years ago, and I know no other languages, and English is in
> > any event the standard language for this list. Bouncing mail using
> > non-roman character sets means I get to not see lots of Chinese,
> > Japanese and Korean spam.
> 
> It also means you'll get not to see lots of mail in English from people
> whose first language is something that needs a different encoding hence
> their normal mail setting is for other character sets. They don't change
> character sets to send messages in English because it's a hassle to do
> so and there's no need, since the characters needed to communicate in
> English are also present in their default character set.
> 
> > 3. I think we discussed this enough some time ago. The filter dropped
> > quite a deal of email.
> 
> I never saw a Peter Whalley bounce because my mailserver rejects
> uol.com.br mails on the basis of that domain having no working
> postmaster address.
> 
> > I'd like the folk who're compiling the guidelines to add the first two
> > points, and ask the list admin to enforce it. Along with any other good
> > ideas these suggestions trigger.
> 
> I'd hope that the guidelines are well peer-reviewed so that problematic
> suggestions such as (2) can be weeded out before they're cast in stone.
> Whatever anti-spam measures Red Hat have in place for this list already
> seem to work *very well*, given the almost entire lack of spam on this
> list (the "computer for sale" message earlier today was one of the very
> very few that got through, and that wasn't a classic mail-to-all-and-
> sundry spam either), and I don't see any urgent need to change that.
> 
> Paul.
> --
> Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>
> 
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> 

Paul,

The guidelines are "peer-reviewed", or whatever comes closer to this:
suggestions only get there after discussed here, and *if* there is
some sort of consensus about it.

Point (1) has been seconded by you, I assume. Point (2) had two
negative answers so far. Let's wait to see how this develops...
  
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Seabra                                           Graduate Student
Chemistry Dept.                                   Kansas State University
Registered Linux user number 381680
Say NO! to software patents: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If at first you don't succeed...
                              ...skydiving is not for you.