I know it's bad form to quote extensively but I don't want to lose the
spirit of Mike's posting, so bear with me...
 
Mike Holloway wrote:
> American.edu and Jim McIntosh, et al, provide an EXTREMELY valuable
> service with their gateway, and I'm sure this thread isn't intended by
> anyone to knock it.  What it does seem to indicate though is that
> there is a widespread wish for some enhancements, or maybe fine tuning
> (I have no idea what's involved).  We've probably gone round this
> several times already, but it's obviously worth repeating and maybe
> things have changed in the meantime.  Is there any way that gating can
> take place after autocancels have had a chance to remove spam?  Is
> there any way the rest of us can facilitate the maintenance and/or
> enhancement of news-to-list gateways?
 
First off, the gateway originally inserted it's [log in to unmask]
address in messages with an invalid or unparseable origin.  This caused
some problems when gated lists with spam filters were triggered by spam
coming from usenet.  Thereafter ANY post from the gateway went to the
listowner as a spam suspect.  I haven't seen this happen in recent
months; but we have moved to Listserv 1.8c on NT since the original
problems and Jim may have tweaked the gateway.  Besides, I now have
the [log in to unmask] set to REVIEW after a mass cross-posting flame
war leaked into my newsgroup.  I've left it in REVIEW mode and would
highly recommend it to every gated list owner unless you have a really
high ratio of usenet origins to listserv origins.  For me, it's 5-10
approvals per day for a list that runs ~50 posts/day.
 
At any rate, I heartily agree with Mike that no fingers should be
pointed
at american.edu.  They are performing a voluntary and highly valuable
service on your behalf.  If you don't like the consequences, set the
gateway subscription to review and exercise your own controls.
 
Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]> utc.edu postmaster/listserv administrator