[EM] Batch of old messages

[Rob Lanphier]

It looks like (c) is the most popular option, so that's what I'll be 
implementing, short of any further discussion/debate on the list.

I'd like to respond to David's mail below:

David GLAUDE wrote:

> Obviously answer to the problem is to really moderate the list... not 
> every 20 days.

Sifting through spam in a limited webform interface is a task I really 
don't look forward to.  So, unfortunately, it may be 20 days between 
times that I do this.

That said, I just found the configuration option titled "Send mail to 
poster when their posting is held for approval?"  I changed this from 
"no" to "yes".  The good news is that mail will immediately get sent 
when someone posts something that gets held in my queue.  The bad news 
is that this mail goes to spammers, and will often lead to bounces, 
which means even more mail for me to sift through.

I'll leave this on, since I think it'll greatly reduce any possible 
confusion.  If this makes things substantially worse, I may turn it back 
off.

> Another solution is to have multiple moderator... they will all get 
> the SPAM but the processing of wrongly sended mail to the list will be 
> much faster... (in my case I used a wrong email address to send).

I thought about this.  The problem with this option is that there's no 
way to give someone access to moderation queue without giving them 
access to a bunch of other stuff.  I don't think I like that.  If I were 
to do that, I would have to give it to a longtime list member who I've 
had enough of a rapport with that I can trust them.

> The downside is that it would be nice to make the list open.  Doing so 
> would mean that people can still contribute to the list even if they 
> don't want to put their e-mail address into the database.
>
> The main question is to know if the database should be:
> A secret (except for administrator)
> B open to the member
> C open to every-one
>
> If A then there is no reason not to subscribe to the list. ;-)

I've kept the list of subscribers secret, because of potential abuse by 
spam harvesters (and because it's the default option in the mailing list 
software, so I would have had to decide one day that more folks should 
see it).

So, as long as you trust that I won't use your email address for 
nefarious purposes (I won't, just in case this made you wonder), there's 
no reason to avoid subscribing.  It's even possible to join the list, 
then turn off mail delivery, so that you can send mail to the list, but 
not receive it (for example, if you prefer reading from web archives).

Rob