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Wed, 7 Aug 1996 14:45:20 +0200 |
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Message of Tue, 6 Aug 1996 16:45:16 -0400 from LISTSERV list
owners' forum < [log in to unmask]> |
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May I kindly remind everyone that "Filter=" was not designed to be a
mechanism to filter naughty people from a mailing list, although people
do use it for this and it does work in that capacity. "Filter=" was
originally introduced as a loop prevention mechanism, to extend the
built-in list of broken gateway addresses, which hopefully you wouldn't
consider sensitive information.
The reason "Filter=" was put in the list header is that there are
currently two mechanisms under list owner control to customize a list:
1. The list header.
2. The MAILTPL file.
Hopefully you will agree that the template for administrative messages is
not a good place to tell LISTSERV which gateways (or naughty users) to
ignore mail from, or to store other operational directives. Besides, the
MAILTPL file can be retrieved by list members (although you can configure
it otherwise). It isn't meant to contain sensitive information.
So your question really is: "Why wasn't a brand new customization
mechanism developed specifically for the Filter= facility?" Well, off the
top of my hat:
- It would take a serious amount of work.
- It would add yet another file for each list, just for "Filter=".
- It would have to be documented carefully with many examples.
- People would have to get used to it.
- It would make LISTSERV more complicated, just for "Filter=".
Eric
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