anti spam measures for libtool lists

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello everybody,

We (the Libtool developers) are trying to increase the signal to noise
ratio on the libtool lists (thanks for pushing us to do this!).

So, in addition to the spamassassin-based filtering done by the savannah
people for all of gnu.org[1], we will now enable moderation for all
non-member posts, for all of the libtool lists[2], in accordance with
maintainers best practices[3].  

mailman allows list moderation by email or web interface.  White- or
blacklisting of individual addresses as well as black holing messages
matching spam waves which are let through by above-mentioned
spamassassin can be done by web interface.

So, the idea is to put non-members that post regularly into white lists.
Alternatively, users who would like to prevent moderation but do not
want all list traffic may consider subscribing and subsequently turning
off list post delivery for their address.  For posters with more than
one address this is an interesting option as well.

I have seeded the list of addresses to allow through by default
(accept_these_nonmembers) with more or less all addresses of good
postings to the respective lists during the last 18 or so months, using
a (hopefully) spam-clean personal archive of mine.  This should ensure
that most recent posters won't get moderated, even if they are
unsubscribed or unsubscribe in the future.

For this measure to work effectively, it would be *great* to have one or
a couple of volunteers for moderation.  Gary and I have agreed to work
on this for now, but we would be happy if somebody could step up to do
this (additionally, or instead).  Basically, the only time-critical work
to do would be to allow good mails from new non-members through -- the
weeding of spam can be done on a regular, less-often basis.  I expect
this to necessitate action of at most a couple of times per day.

When the savannah hackers get around to allowing list archives
cleanup[4], we might also consider weeding the existing archive a bit.
Also, should there be a significant amount of spam with From: from list
members, we might consider enabling first-time post moderation as well.

So, I would like to solicit comments/criticism/suggestions, and of
course volunteers!  :)

Cheers,
Ralf

[1] http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?func=detailitem&item_id=104337
    http://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?func=detailitem&item_id=103548
    Apparently, the amount of spam that got through so far is but a tiny
    fraction of the amount sent to these lists.
[2] For bug-libtool, the justification is that before a new release, the
    maintainer should additionally look into the list of pending requests.
    This will be mentioned in the release action notes.
[3] http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html#Mail
[4] http://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?func=detailitem&item_id=103933