Re: new spam functionality added

[Josh Huber <huber+dated+1028587986.de2d4e@alum.wpi.edu>]

Scott A Crosby <scrosby@cs.rice.edu> writes:

> TMDA is an end-user system, there will be misconfigurations of it,
> and bad reimplementations.. Hell, I got a vacation message from a
> message to this mailing list only an hour ago... After 20 years,
> you'd think they'd not be writing broken vacation programs anymore.

I agree, but you can hardly blame TMDA for bad re-implementations,
right?  (btw, I got the same vacation message!)

> Sure.. I could configure TMDA to not act like an idiot. (well,
> mostly, I'd still screw up a little and harass some mail admins),
> but I'm not a typical user.

I see where you're coming from here.  Something like TDMA does require
some effort and know-how to configure and use.  It will be interesting
to see what really happens over the next few years with junk email.
For the moment, I think *I'm* using TMDA in a responsible manner, if I
feel like it's too much burden on others I'll stop using it.

>    ''If X uses his common sense, this won't happen.''
>
> And what if X isn't aware of all the subtle issues? Which is what
> you'd expect from most people and implementations out there.

Well, okay.  I really see what you're saying here.  I think a tool
like TMDA is pretty powerful and used incorrectly it could be an
incredible pain in the ass to everyone.  (see for example all the
poorly designed virus sanners spamming mailing lists out there)

> Or, this is interesting:
>
>    ''headers 'X-Delivery-Agent:.*TMDA' ok''
>
> to auto-allow-TMDA messages through. So, start putting that on all
> of your email.

Personally, I don't think this is a good solution and wouldn't
recommend using this kind of a rule with TMDA, but it is available.

> I don't know.... if 6% of my outgoing email required confirmation,
> I'd be pretty annoyed. Autoreplying to one or two TMDA's a day costs
> me a lot more time than skimming my spam folder for accidental false
> positives.

I agree, 6% is a lot.  Of course, not too much information is there
wrt this figure.  the 6% may include requesting confirmations from
spam as well.

> I should apologize.. I've just been reading too much about people
> lauding TMDA as being great. However, I think its a fundamentally
> bad idea; a perfect example of tragedy of the commons.

You keep saying that, but I'm not so sure I agree.  Personally, I'm
going to wait and see.  The tragedy of the commons seems to rely on
the fact that there are limited resources, and once these resources
are used, they are no longer available.  I don't think this is the
case with bandwidth.  I really do see what you're saying, honestly :)

I guess I'm willing to wait and see if it will work, rather then just
writing it off as terrible without even trying it.  As I've said
before, it's worked for me quite well so far but I have yet to see how
well it will scale.

Perhaps we should stop spamming the list with this discussion since it
has very little to do with the development of Gnus :)

(btw, please respect my Mail-Copies-To header)

ttyl,

-- 
Josh Huber