[Coco] A return to bit.listserv.coco?

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

At 09:55 AM 3/21/05 -0800, alsplace at pobox.com wrote:
>if the desire is just to link bit.listserv.coco (newsgroup) 
>to an e-mail list, and we can bridge THIS list with that one, that 
>would be ideal.  I like the idea fo the moderated MAILING LIST (ie, 
>things sent to MY mailbox) to remain moderated, while the world can 
>post to the public newsgroup -- which is public anyway.

When we worked on getting this system functioning, the idea was to make it
100% transparent.

That's the hard part. A one-way gate out to bit.listserv.coco can end up
with broken discussions because gating the group back in opens the door to
spam. In any case, email addresses are not obfuscated on a public group, so
it's then becomes a personal spam issue.

For those unclear about how this is working, let me explain:
1. Both Yahoo and maltedmedia lists are authenticated and moderated, and
the Gmane newsgroup is authenticated. This is the basic spam-prevention
method.*
2. All three lists are interconnected as authenticated "members" of each
other, meaning a post to any one goes to all. (Gmane has a special
technique for doing this.)
3. The messages are not duplicated because duplication filtering is running
on all three "memberships".

As you have seen, it works well (except when someone hits their "reply all"
function without hand-culling the duplicate addresses).

Of course, I agree with Boisy that the use of a 100% public newsgroup is
the ideal, for all the reasons he mentioned. I'm happy to be convinced if
there's a reasonably foolproof way of doing it -- and I'm not the brightest
bulb when it comes to mailing list software. But I'm certainly not going to
gate out the messages on our list with everyone's email address revealed!
One could go back to anonymous posting -- and the disaster that invites.

Dennis


*Maltedmedia get regular spam attempts through its "bounce" system, and
spam sign-ups that self-verify. Clever spammers -- but not quite so clever
as to give a real name along with the spam email address. I verify each new
signup that comes in without a real name. First, I search old coco
newsgroup and list postings for it; if it exists, I pass it through. If I
don't find it, I then search the web for the address, and pass it through
if I find it used recently. If those don't succeed, I email the subscribed
and ask for their real name. If that doesn't work, I assume it's spam --
and, of course, it gets *me* more spam in doing so!