gnuplot-beta

Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Hello, everyone,

you may not have been aware of this, but the new gnuplot-beta mailing list
at sourceforge restricts the right to post mails to its subscribers to the
subscribers themselves.  This may or may not be a good thing.

As it is right now, submissions by non-members will be held for approval
by an admin (i.e: myself), which may delay their processing by a day or
more, and thus encumber the flow of discussion.  I've just cut a path
through an absolutely enormous back-log of such mailing list
administration requests, over 99 percent of which was junk mail to the
dartmouth list which ended up in the admin interface at SF.net (thanks to
Dave Denholm and the guys at Dartmouth for setting up a better solution to
this, which will be used from now on).  The flurry of belated mails you're
seeing today are the remaining less than 1 percent as accumulated in about
a month (plus replies to those).

OTOH, if I open up the list for posting by everybody, that means all
that's standing guard between your inbox and the unwashed masses of junk
mailers out there waiting to flood it is the automatic spam filtering
system used by SourceForge.  That's quite a successful one, granted, but
still not 100% leakproof.

Before changing this, I'ld like a poll.  So: if anybody has strong
opinions in either direction, please voice them soon.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.

Re: Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Lars H. <lhe...@us...>]

> Before changing this, I'ld like a poll.  So: if anybody has strong
> opinions in either direction, please voice them soon.
 
 If people who's posts are held receive a notification of the fact,
 I'd like to keep things the way they are - 15.000 spams/month are
 no fun.

 If it helps, you can add my SF address to the moderators list and we
 can share the load. I'm already moderating two lists at gnupg.org, and
 it would be little additional load.

Re: Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> you may not have been aware of this, but the new gnuplot-beta mailing list
> at sourceforge restricts the right to post mails to its subscribers to the
> subscribers themselves.  This may or may not be a good thing.

I would prefer your suggestion -- the administrator could redirect mails of
non-subscribers to the newsgroup / gnuplot users lists, instead of replying
to them on this list.

People got accustomed to ask questions at this list as they have used
gnuplot beta's for so many years...

--
PM

Re: Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Thursday 03 June 2004 09:18 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
>
> Before changing this, I'ld like a poll.  So: if anybody has strong
> opinions in either direction, please voice them soon.

I'd rather keep the list subscriber-only, and if possible to 
auto-generate a reply to non-subscribed messages that
says something like:

This is a subscriber-only mailing list for discussion of 
gnuplot development.  

If you have a specific question, please post it to 
usenet group comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot.

If you want to report a bug or file a feature request, please use
the web-submission forms at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot

If you would like to participate in on-going discussion 
about gnuplot development, subscribe yourself to this
list by {.... instructions}

-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195

Re: Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> I'd rather keep the list subscriber-only, and if possible to
> auto-generate a reply to non-subscribed messages that
> says something like:

I like the way to send a message to a group without sending two emails
before to subscribe there, and then again to unsubscribe from there.
It may bother users so much that they won't send any message at all.
(My own experience :-()

--
PM

Re: Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

I like Ethan's suggestion of giving some directions.  If possible, maybe 
include the original message so that if the user for some reason doesn't 
have a copy of their original, they can redirect the replied copy to the 
appropriate place.  Would that eliminate the need to sort through email, 
the majority of which is spam?

Dan


Ethan Merritt wrote:

>On Thursday 03 June 2004 09:18 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
>  
>
>>Before changing this, I'ld like a poll.  So: if anybody has strong
>>opinions in either direction, please voice them soon.
>>    
>>
>
>I'd rather keep the list subscriber-only, and if possible to 
>auto-generate a reply to non-subscribed messages that
>says something like:
>  
>

Re: Should we keep this list subscriber-only?

[Dave D. <dde...@es...>]

Ethan Merritt <merritt@u.washington.edu> writes:

> On Thursday 03 June 2004 09:18 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
>>
>> Before changing this, I'ld like a poll.  So: if anybody has strong
>> opinions in either direction, please voice them soon.
>
> I'd rather keep the list subscriber-only, and if possible to 
> auto-generate a reply to non-subscribed messages that
> says something like:
>
> This is a subscriber-only mailing list for discussion of 
> gnuplot development.  
>

One problem with automatically sending back a reply is that if
most of the incoming mail is junk, we are adding to the problem of
unsolicited mails bouncing around the network.

One game that people seem to play is sending mail to one list with a
from field of another list. So any automated replies get sent back
to the other list. (I block a lot of junk mail to the gnuplot
lists which looks like it's auto-replies from other lists)


dd
-- 
Dave Denholm              <dde...@es...>       http://www.esmertec.com