Spam and mailing lists

[Ben Scott]

On 10/19/06, brk <gnhlug at karas.net> wrote:
> Just pick an MTA and be done with it, as long as the list mail gets
> through 95% of the subscriber base probably doesn't care.

  The topic for this list is Linux and related software.  That would
include MTAs.  There's lots of people here with experience with Linux,
mail servers, list servers, and spam fighting.  I can't think of a
more on-topic and appropriate discussion for this forum.  Since the
only MTA I have any real experience with is Sendmail, I'm very
interested in the experiences and opinions of others here.  So far,
I've found much of the discussion quite useful.

  This list doesn't exist just for the sake of having a mailing list.
The idea is to, you know, share information.

> Sometimes the most important job of a list admin is simple to make
> decisions silently and gracefully.

  I am interested in the topics noted above, and feel they are
on-topic, which is why I started this thread.  The fact that I also
happen to be handling the care and feeding of the list we are on is
coincidental.

  I'm not asking the list membership to vote on which MTA the list
should be using.

> For the processing power this list takes I could run it off of a PIC-based
> webserver and an MLM written in LOGO.

  The discussion (well, the one I'm interested in, anyway) actually
has very little to do with processing power and that sort of thing.
It's mainly about effective security tactics (spam fighting is
security) and keeping administration costs down.

> Do whatever you want with the subject line, you'll never please
> everyone anyway.

  Absolutely.  The subject-line-munging discussion gets raised on
pretty much every list from time to time (along with
reply-to-munging).  It's one of those perennial debates.  In my role
of List Janitor, I mostly ignore such things, unless they're a clear
mandate to actually change something.

-- Ben