bruce clark writes: > My problem: the users on my lists are waging a low-level war with > their sig files. I do not allow commercial posting so they have > started creating sig files with their commercial messages inside them.
First, consider whether this is really so bad. I know I would be annoyed if I were in your position -- these folks are deliberately flouting your rules -- but do the other users really care? If it's in the sig, maybe nobody is looking at it unless they want to. (No need to explain to us; I just want to point out that the list owner is very likely to be exceptionally sensitive to this kind of behavior, and maybe it's not causing problems for the general members any more.) If you think that something should be done, I second Mark's suggestion of moderating "offenders" (filtering out whole posts as needed). If I understand the situation correctly, these really are *your* lists. You may or may not be paying for the service in money, but you sure have invested your time and effort and stress. In Internet tradition, you have every right to behave as capriciously as you like in allowing traffic on your lists; simply enforcing the rules that have been announced gives nobody *any* ground for complaint. (That's not going to stop the prima donnas from screeching, and that may be a real problem for you, but for stress reduction, it's important that you realize that they are in the wrong, you are in the right, and that is that. Then you can do what needs doing "in sorrow rather than in anger".) [[[ aside: > listed the mime types of images to be filtered, Hey, don't run yourself down as "not an admin"! There are plenty of people who never figure that one out! ]]] > but there is still text in the sig files that I would like to > delete before the mail reaches the list. This is not a great idea IMO. Without agreement from the authors, it is legally (copyright), ethically (IMHO, YMMV), and technically problematic. The first two are up to your judgment. The technical issue is that, unlike images and other multimedia attachments, the signature is just text that is automatically inserted at the end of the message, often without the author ever seeing it. Conventionally a signature is preceded by a line that contains the characters "-- " (HYPHEN HYPHEN SPACE), no more, no less. This allows readers with capable mail programs to suppress display of the signature. I infer from your post that the offenders are doing so deliberately. If so, they can add it to their messages in an unconventional way that an automatic sig-stripper won't recognize. You can update the stripper for new separators, but that's no fun for you. It's also beyond current technology to recognize commercial content and strip only that. So you are going to have to do the work of checking for forbidden content. If you want it removed, you'll probably have to hand edit each offending message. > should I be putting my energy somewhere else? I guess I would somehow > need to intercept the mail between the sender and the receiver and > somehow 'fix' it? I recommend, don't fix it, reject it. Specifically, in the mailman web interface, go to the membership pages, then to the problematic user, and switch on the moderated checkbox for that member. When their mail arrives, you (the list owner, and any assistant moderators you appoint) will be told by Mailman. If it has any commercial content, reject it (there are four choices, "hold, approve, reject, discard"; reject sends a message back to the author explaining why, discard drops it in a black hole). Have a canned message like "Commercial content is forbidden on this list. For technical reasons it cannot be automatically removed. Please resend your post without such content." Let people think it's being done by a robot; that often keeps them from yelling too much. If the mail is legitimate, let it through. You needn't do this operation very often; Mailman will hold on to the messages forever. Remember, they are disobeying the rules, and deliberately if I understand correctly. You have no obligation to do anything for them; reviewing the moderation queue every few days at your convenience is *more* than they have any right to ask. You do this *for yourself*, because you want to see the on-topic content they send, or because you want to support your other members who do. When a person sends a couple of posts without objectionable content, or if they send a sincere apology, turn off moderation for them as described above. How quickly to do this is a matter for your judgment, obviously, but in my experience for most people having to sit out one heated discussion because their posts don't show up until after it's over is more than enough to convince them that crossing the moderator is a bad idea. > (and don't suggest that I go around to the offenders' houses and beat > them up - because I've thought of that already) Well, that might require lawyers and icky stuff like that in the end. Letting them sit in a corner for a day or five waiting for their oh- so-important posts to arrive at the list seems like a more appropriate measure. What do you think? 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