Netiquette

[Tapani Tarvainen]

> funny face [...] nutcases [...] pussy [...]

I really dislike that kind of language, especially on a technical list
like this. Abusive language, name-calling, ad hominem attacks etc
really should have no place here.

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 09:41:23AM -0500, Greg Wooledge (greg@wooledge.org) 
wrote:

> How do we stop them from doing this?  Is there any way?

Some. But nothing easy.

> Do we need to permanently block protonmail?  That seems like overkill,
> with possible fallout that we'd want to avoid.

It would be overkill. It might not even help much, as there are lots
of other email providers people could switch to.

The only effective way to keep abusive language out of the list would
be moderating it. However, finding someone willing to spend their time
on that (and dealing with the inevitable abuse directed at themselves,
claims of sensorship &c) would not be easy, I'm afraid.

It could be made a bit easier by making it selective: e.g., set
moderation bit on for all new users and only turning it off after the
subscriber has sent some reasonable number of non-abusive messages.
(Mailman2 has a feature just for this, default_member_moderation.)

Or, maybe do that selectively for mail providers that have a history
of abusive users. (Automating this would take some effort.)

A theoretical alternative would be an automated filtering system that
either rejects or flags for moderation messages that appear to contain
abusive language. Doing that well enough that it'd be less work than
simply moderating everything would not be exactly trivial, however.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen