[TAG] Closed account question

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

[ Forwarded to TAG for possible additional comment ]

Hi, RJ -

On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 10:28:03AM -0700, RJ Burke wrote:
> I've been unable to solve the problem of separating TAG replies from the 
> waves of spam that we battle every day.  Since the TAG replies come from 
> previously unknown addresses, we can't "white list" them.  Since they're 
> unknown senders, they're automatically blacklisted and bounced.
> 
> If you have a way to "tag" the senders email address with any 
> distinctive mark (even something like "[TAG] sender at anywhere.net"), then 
> we could grab them from the incoming stream using a simple regular 
> expression filter.

If you examine the headers from any TAG email, you'll see that there are
a number of unique headers. As an example, it would be easy to filter on

``
List-Id: The Answer Gang <tag.lists.linuxgazette.net>
''

As to spam, you may or may not have noticed, but the incidence of it has
gone down (my estimate) by ~99% since Rick Moen took over administering
the list. It's been more than a year, and I don't think I've seen a
dozen spams get through during that time.

> I've raised this question before, but nothing was done. Until then, I 
> don't know how to avoid having TAG replies from unknown members bounced 
> back.  Perhaps a login readers' forum is a better format?

You're trying to solve the wrong problem. If we wanted querents to
become list members, we wouldn't need a forum - we'd just make joining
TAG a requirement. The model that we use does not require that, by
explicit decision. The concerns you've stated above can be handled as
I've described.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *