On Sun, 9 Jul 1995, Michael I. Starr wrote:
> I have advised our list owners to remove these addresses and we are
> reviewing subscription procedures for all lists at our site.
 
The interesting thing about the recent bogus subscriptions is the
discussion that it has caused and what we can learn from it.  One thing I
learned is that you can setup a filter on a _single_ list to block that
address in the future.  Also, this is taking up peoples time, which we
are all short of.  I have also learned the postmaster can do a site-wide
delete of a given username from all lists at that site.  So the
postmaster at the site can take care of it quickly instead of all the
many listowners having to get involved.
 
Now, my question is: can you setup a site-wide filter?  Then you protect
all lists at once.  The less-experienced list owners do not have to
hassle with it and ask a million questions.  The site postmasters can
share this information with each other, and so the site-wide delete can
be followed with site-wide filtering at all the major sites - and basically
take care of the bogus subscribers quickly and efficiently.
 
The next step would be to setup net-wide filtering.  If you had site-wide
filtering, then the backbone sites at the very least could automate it by
having a private mailing list amongst each other, and automatic handling
of the messages, so that any one of them could do a net-wide filter
setup in effect by triggering the site-wide filters.  Probably you would
want to assign that to just a few of them.  If this would be cumbersome
to do for all sites then you could at least do it for the main sites.
 
This idea applies to net-wide deletes as well as net-wide filtering;
done informally with a mailing list.  And any site that was uncomfortable
with the net-wide effect could elect not to be on the mailing list.
 
Does this site-wide filtering exist?  Net-wide filtering?  Net-wide
delete?  If not, could they exist?  Should they?  It sounds to me like they
could, and should.  But anything net-wide sounds kind of scary... has to
be done carefully.  And there are considerations for how such things
'scale up', as Eric likes to remind us.   But it happens infrquently
enough that it ought to be manageeable.
 
Thanks,
 
Kevin (a list owner, not a postmaster)
 
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