[ih] spam...

[Perry E. Metzger]

Joe Touch <touch at ISI.EDU> writes:
> We will not block HTML. Even if the numbers above were correct, it
> would not solve the problem (foreign language isn't caught even in
> ASCII) and it would raise the number of false positives that require
> manual attention.

I respect your decision, but experience shows your claims are not correct.

You (essentially) contend that blocking HTML and other similar things
doesn't improve the situation and just makes for more work.  Although
nothing "solves" the problem, actual experience running large numbers
of lists shows that filters that generally catch spam and not real
traffic are a valuable technique and do not pose a burden.

As a worked example: The NetBSD Project runs dozens of mailing lists
with this sort of filtering, and the amount of excess manual labor
involved is near zero, whereas the amount of spam blocked is extremely
high. I'm one of the moderators and our regular expression filters
have one false positive for every 40 or 50 correct blocks. The biggest
issue, in fact, is manually reading all the spam so we can approve the
very rare real message.

By the way, the NetBSD lists are unusual in that they allow postings
from non-members for technical reasons, so anti-spam filters are
important. Most lists I am involved with eliminate 100% of spam by
blocking postings from non-members. (And I know you claim your list
software would then make it difficult for people to post from multiple
accounts, but the documentation for your list software says how to do
it.)

> Feel free to install filters on your receiving end, however ;-)

I have.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com