On 9/20/06, Kevin Parris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> They may simply be a person with some experience on LISTSERV(tm) hosted
> lists, and have their preferences for how they like to do things.  More
> important to your situation, I think, is based on other information you
> have about the prospective subscriber- do they "belong" in the audience
> your list is intended for?  I wouldn't use their apparent technical
> familiarity with the software product as a basis for judgement.


That was my first thought -- that it was someone who knew their way around
listserv, not necessarily for nefarious reasons. But the more I thought
about the combination of settings, it seemed at least worth checking out.


Since you describe your list as announcement-oriented,
> Default-options=review or nopost may already be in place... or if you're
> concerned this prospective subscriber might be disruptive, you can
> quietly set review or nopost on them once they are subscribed.


We do have the list set so that all posts not from list owners are subject
to moderator approval, so perhaps we should just approve the subscription
and see what happens. I certainly would hate to block someone who has a
sincere interest in our work based on a vague suspicion. One positive sign
is that the person did provide a name as well as an e-mail address.
Unfortunately it is a very common name, and (paradoxically) not one that is
familiar to us as a "friend" of the Center.

Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to respond! And I learned
something, too -- we do not have the REVIEW command set to owner only.
Several of you made a good point about doing this to make sure spammers
can't harvest the list, so we will be changing that pronto on all our lists.

Thanks again to Kevin, Bill and Rich.

Julia