On 9/10/2012 16:36, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
[Part 2 of tips for list moderators]
MODERATION [AND PRIVATE-LIST SUBSCRIPTION] REQUESTS ARE SENT TO ALL MODERATORS
Since the request is sent as an e-mail, each moderator receives the same
request.
The first moderation wins. You'll receive a notice if your moderation arrives
when another moderator's action has already been taken. That doesn't happen
very often.
The moderation request has the message being moderated as an attachment. Be
careful with it.
I will cover only moderation requests here. Subscription requests for private
lists are rather tricky.
1. SPAM DROPPING
If the message is clearly spam, IGNORE IT. Using the moderation-request
rejection option will send a message back to the original sender. That is
undesirable. It confirms to spammers that they've reached a working e-mail
address. Don't do that.
2. OFF-PURPOSE MESSAGES
As a moderator, I don't make it my job to handle messages that appear
legitimate but are sent to the wrong list. List subscribers can do that. And
if this is happening too much, it suggests that something needs to be done to
help submitters find the correct place more easily.
What I do is moderate the message onto the list. I have rarely used the reject
option, and only when I am confident the e-mail is from a legitimate sender.
There are two basic ways to moderate a message onto the list.
1. The message can be accepted in accordance with the instructions in the
moderation-request e-mail. That is a one-time acceptance.
2. Another way is to accept that message and all future messages to the list
from that sender.
The way to accept all messages from the sender is to make a REPLY ALL to the moderation-request
message. That is, your reply to the request is addressed to both the accept and the reject
addresses. (This solution is not always listed in the -help message. It works though.) You will
have to delete the non-disclosed-recipients e-mail address if that appears in your
Reply All message.
3. An alternative is to send a rejection with explanation. That is probably
not great. The messages from the robot are lengthy and cryptic. It may be
difficult for the original sender.
4. Finally, you can reply to the attachment and be helpful directly. I've done
that. I don't make a practice of it. It moves response and awareness of the kinds
of questions from the list to the moderator. If you *do* do this, it is wise to copy
listname-owner@ so that other moderators will know what happened. It is also
good to check the list to verify that some other moderator did not already allow the
message through.
3. ON-PURPOSE MESSAGES
I recommend the second moderation-in technique for these. This can also happen
when a list subscriber uses a different e-mail than the one they have
subscribed to the list.
Discussion?
- Dennis
When moderating a couple of OO.o lists in their dying days, I took a
more aggressive approach to spammers. If they were sending from any of
the large U.S. ISPs (MS, Google, Yahoo, ATT, et al.) I would follow the
complaint procedure to try to get the account closed. (This is a little
different for the different companies: MS wants attachments, while
others want pasted parts of the offending email.) MS in particular is
polite about it; I'd get a note saying that the account has been closed.
Others say thanks, but cite privacy regs, which I consider bogus;
nonetheless, I don't recall ever getting any more spam from a
complained-about account, if the ISP acked the complaint.
Note that this requires careful analysis of the internal headers: the
main address is often munged, and you need to go way down to the last
received from header. I have a little list of useful URLs to look up
IP owners and ISP complaint addresses, if anybody wants it.
One real success was with a number of spammers from a .edu address. The
admin I wrote to replied politely that the situation would be handled,
and it was: their spam vanished.
This kind of work takes some time, but it makes the Net better for
everybody, not just our ML.
/tj/
