[EM] Batch of old messages

Rob Lanphier robla at robla.net
Wed Nov 19 21:42:01 PST 2003


Hi all,

You'll probably notice a batch of fairly old messages coming through on 
the list.  This is because I just went through the queue of 28 messages 
which sat in the moderator queue, and found the half a dozen or so that 
are legit emails, as opposed to the rest, which were spam.  The reason 
why all of these messages are there is because non-member mails need to 
get approved by me in order to go through.

The mail list software for this list is Mailman, which is probably the 
best mail list management software out there.  However, one thing that 
is less than perfect is the user interface for these.  It's not meant to 
deal with large volumes of mails, which I'm receiving now (much to my 
annoyance).  This causes me to procrastinate on doing this, which in 
turn causes old mail to stack up. 

When I'm faced with a legit mail that's 20 days old, I'm at a quandry 
what to do.  I'm not keeping track of the list traffic...I just haven't 
had time to read this list.  It could be that I'm letting duplicate 
messages through, because the person who tried sending figured out they 
needed to subscribe.

So, I'm asking the list.  Which would you rather see me do when messages 
are sent from non-list members, given the fact that I might not get 
around to cleaning the queue out more than once or twice a month:
a.  allow legit posts through, regardless of how old
b.  allow recent posts through (2-3 days) bounce all posts more than 
three days old, with explanation "please join the list to post"
c.  bounce all posts, with explanation "please join the list to post"
d.  change this to a completely unmoderated list (not really an option, 
see below)
e.  other (see below for "d")

I'd really rather not do "d", because it's easier for me to reject the 
spam before it gets to the list than it is to clean it out of the mail 
list archives afterwards.  In fact, I would need to contact my ISP for 
the latter.

Thoughts?
Rob






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