Dealing with Fedora's mailing list

Bill Davidsen davidsen at tmr.com
Sat Jul 4 17:59:45 UTC 2009


gilpel at altern.org wrote:
> If there's anybody here who's in charge of Fedora's mailing lists, I must
> say that the way you're dealing with susbscribers seems dishonest.
> 
	[...snip... summary: I don't know how mailing lists work...]

> I don't know what's the reason for this, but it doesn't seem like a
> professional attitude to me.
> 
	[...snip... summary: but I'll insult the list manager...]


> What would make sense, is asking people to subscribe from an address that
> correspond to an ISP. Even people who have their own mail server have a
> few addresses at their ISP. And even those servers could be accepted as
> they relate to the one from their ISP. Establishing a domain name for
> spamming is not very efficient either.
> 
This is sensible how? Yu miss the fact that services like gmail do a far better 
job of spam filtering than most ISPs. So people want to get their mail there.

> I'm not much of a techie, you already know that, but it seems to me that
> the only way to prevent spamming is to prevent people from registering
> from email service providers such as Google, Yahoo... or Altern, where it
> takes only minutes to register, then bye-bye.
> 
Everything after the first comma was redundant.

> But this is now permitted and there is...as far as I can see, not that
> much spam. So, once again, why all those shenanigans?
> 
> 
> Back to the suggestions to solve my problem in real time.
> 
> It was suggested that I use Gmane. My new server is eternal-september.org
> (Formerly Motzarella.) The gmane groups are not available. I wrote to
> Wolfgang, whose's always doing his best to offer prime quality service...
> and never sent the email.
> 
We believe you that you're not a techie, you can stop now. OK, that was mean, 
but gmane is a news server, subscribe to the groups on news.gmane.org and enjoy.

	[...snip...]

> I had my fair share of trial and error these days. So, what should be my
> settings for pop and smtp, if those are the protocols used? If I use
> gilpel (at) altern org as my username and add my password, will Red Hat
> servers really see no diffrence whether I'm posting from Altern or my
> provider? Will emails be sent to Altern to check if I'm still using it as
> my email service provider?
> 
I have no idea what you mean, I would turn off delivery and read the lists at 
gmane, save bandwidth, get filtering, and be happy.

> I hope maintainers of this list won't object to a clear answer to those
> questions...
> 
A little learning is a dangerous thing. The clear answer is that you should read 
at gmane and not try to do clever things when you understand neither the method 
or the purpose of what you attempt.

Learn to create virtual machines, set up a few, and play spam filtering between 
them. Save some real live spam and use it for testing, learn to use procmail and 
spamassasin, then consider using a tool like fetchmail to pull you mail and feed 
it to your very own mail server.

I don't think you're stupid, but you are flailing for simple solutions to a 
complex issue, and you're in not only over your head, but too deep to snorkel. 
Start learning, ask well focused questions, assume that people who do this for a 
living haven't missed the "obvious" answers, and you could become quite 
proficient in the area.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot




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