Re: Hassle with 'subscribers only' policy

[Laurent Bercot <ska-supervision@skarnet.org>]

> Hi, I personally really dislike this 'subscribers only' post policy.  For
> mailing list subscriptions, I use different (private) mail addresses than those
> I use for posting.  When sending mail, I use different addresses in the envelope
> and the header's From:.  With the current 'subscribers only' policy, I have to
> go through several steps to finally have a mail posted to this list, this one
> now goes through gmane.  I was very pleased with the confirmation requests sent
> to the envelope sender, this was just a single easy extra step, and the message
> was done.
> 
> Furthermore, this mailing list is mentioned on the runit web page as contact
> address for contributed run scripts.  I received a complaint, and support it,
> that contributing is made rather difficult, because it's that hard to get the
> mail delivered, the contributor finally gave up.

 I totally understand, and agree with the fact the 'subscribers only'
policy is a hassle.
 However, as you surely have noticed, this policy, coupled with subscription
moderation, has totally eliminated spam.
 Beforehand, the mailing-list was horrendously plagued with spam, to the
point that several users complained, and talked me into changing the policy.
You can even find the relevant posts in the mailing-list archives.

 Confirmation requests sent to the envelope sender for every message
doesn't work reliably enough anymore. Some robots are intelligent enough
now to detect confirmation requests and reply to them; confirmation
requests may reduce list spam, but do not eliminate it, far from it.

 It's really a choice between user convenience and security - as is the
case with most systemm administration stuff.
 I don't want to change the policy every few months because people
complain. If I listen to you and change it back to non-subscribers-only,
we'll get spam again, and subscribers will protest. I don't think there's
a solution that makes everyone happy, as long as IM2000 isn't out.

 Of course, your opinion weighs a lot, since you're the runit author
and people mostly use this list to talk about runit; but still, I'm
inclined to keep things the way they are now - else it will be a
neverending back-and-forth movement.

 What do the users hate less? Spam, or lack of convenience ?

-- 
 Laurent