> > Have we enjoyed talking about spam so far? Is this still
 > > an "amanda" list? Are we interested in spam more than in
 > > amanda? Finally, is enough enough?
 > 
 > The same discussion occurs about every year or so on many
 > lists.  Those that aren't interested can hit their
 > delete-thread key.
 > 
 > It's something that affects all the list members and some
 > are obviously quite concerned about it, so it's a valid list
 > topic, IMO.

It's not.  See http://www.amanda.org/ for the one setence "charter" for
the list.  Beyond that, the only person who can do anything about it
really doesn't read amanda-users.

The last time this came up was a little over six months ago and here's
what I said last time.  Everything still stands, although I didn't have
the time in October I thought I would.  It (or some simpler solution)
still beckons from my list of things I really need to get to soon.

I'm concerned about a lot of things that have nothing to do with amanda,
but really there are other appropriate forums for discussing those and
this just wastes everyone's time.

please, everyone, this discussion is not accomplishing anything and it's
already generated far more traffic than the spam that comes through the
list does.  Let's move on to what's on topic.

If legal threats over this come to pass, that's the fastest way to
shut down the mailing list itself.  No volunteer in their right mind
(certainly not this one) would spend their spare time doing something
that's going to get them in legal trouble that benefits them about zero.

I'm still waiting for volunteers, btw.  Nobody has stepped up and
offered to write any code to help deal with the problem.

as before, please don't reply to this on the list.

-Todd

---<snip>---

To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: spam to amanda-users
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:12:21 -0400
From: Todd Kover <kovert AT omniscient DOT com>


Please, please, please, let's take discussion of what to do about spam
on amanda-users offline.

It does nobody any good to debate dealing with spam on the list and it's
unquestionably off-topic as much as the spam itself is.  If it will
make people feel better, I'll setup an unmoderated open list called
amanda-lists-spam-discussion AT amanda DOT org to give you a place to vent
about it.

To be frank, the list is not a democracy and it does no good to debate
the topic here, especially since I (the guy who hosts the lists) do
not read amanda-users that closely these days (it's as time permits
but it's low on my list -- my day job is too consuming).  All it's
accomplishing is aggrevating folks.

Given that over 50% of messages to amanda-users come from
non-subscribers (I've done occasional spot checks of this over the past
five or so years I've run amanda-users), it seems inappropriate to me to
restrict it to non-subscribers.  There are many other philosophies on
this point and we can debate it again and again, but that won't likely
change anything.

All that having been said, (and with this message, I've probably already
annoyed a bunch of people who will be sending unsubscription requests
in response to what they think is an unreasonable attitude :-) I have
some thoughts on how to deal with the spam better, and will likely be
dropping something into place that interacts with spamassassin to make
non-subscribers whose messages cross it's thresholds to have to manually
acknowledge that they meant to send it. (similar in theory to the auth
mechanisms in place with majordomo when you describe).

This will likely not happen until at least October when I expect spare
cycles to write up and test the scripts to do this.  If someone is aware
of something out there that already exists that does something along
those lines please send mail to be privately and it will likely get done
a lot faster.

If you'd like to volunteer to write such a beast, please let me know
privately.

If you'd like to debate this matter with the people right now who can
affect any change whatsoever, please direct it at postmaster AT amanda DOT org
and not to the mailing list.  However, that's most likely going to just
delay implementation of the above since I'll be spending more time
dealing with discussing what to do than actually doing. :-)

please, please please do not reply to this message including the list
and let's get the messages back to discussions about amanda.

-Todd