September 29, 2003
I'm on a mailing list that occasionally gets spam. This is ridiculous, it should be easy enough to filter out almost all the spam by requiring that only subscribers can post. Confirm the legitimacy of the subscribers in any way you see fit, and you're more or less set. But no, there's this nested list thing, where the members of list B get a copy of every message sent to list A. This is done because presumably the list B members can't be treated like intelligent adults and expected to subscribe to list A if they want those messages. Setting a requirement on list A such that only subscribers can post somehow interferes with delivery to nested list B, so the most immediately effective anti-spam measure is not available.
Gah.
A software upgrade in the works will allegedly solve the nested list problem, but that doesn't mean it's not a lame idea in the first place.
What's more, there's this guy who sends an anti-spam message to the list complaining about every bit of spam that makes it through. Worse, he quotes the whole friggin' message in his complaint, so now we're treated to the spam twice. As icing on the cake, his replies are sent high priority, just like the spam he's complaining about. C'mon, people, think!
