[Techtalk] Linuxchix using SPEWS?

[Mary]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004, Andrea Landaker wrote:
> I'm not sure what list this should go to (or should it just go to an
> admin?  I couldn't find contact information on the website . . .), so
> please feel free to move it if I'm off track.

The right place to send it would be volunteers@ I think. Volunteers,
Andrea's original message is at
http://linuxchix.org/pipermail/techtalk/2004-August/018919.html

> Is it possible to change this behavior of the Linuxchix lists?  Since the 
> lists are for subscribers-only (essentially a whitelist), is blacklisting 
> necessary?  I ask these honestly -- if there really is a reason for an RBL, 
> and SPEWs really is the best one for the job, then that's fine, but my 
> experience denotes otherwise.

I think the blacklisting reduces processing time on a lot of spam.

Instead of this:

 - accept mail
 - put mail in queue
 - deliver mail to mailing list
 - mailing list notices that it is from unsubbed address
 - moderator looks at mail
 - moderator discards mail

it does this:

  - reject mail

I think the LinuxChix servers have upon occasion been nearly crippled
just by the volume of spam people try and send to it[1] so this processing
time does matter. But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth raising the
issue on volunteers.

-Mary

[1] I don't know the LinuxChix percentages, but debian.org reports that
something like 98% of all mail it processes is now spam. And debian.org
gets a *lot* of legit mail, so you can imagine the size of the spam.