[VicPiMakers SG] Mailing list maintenance / policy

[Mark G.]

Howdy Folks,

There has been a notable increase in spam postings
to the steering group list lately.  Technically, posts
sent by 'non-members to a members-only' list.
The current default is to Hold these messages and wait
for moderator (me) approval.

Approval requires me to look at the spam (eww).
Click open and reply to the attached confirmation message.
This includes setting the From: address to the moderator's
address.  Clicking send.  Marking the newly incoming notice
of confirmation as read.  Deleting both the Holding
message and the confirmation message.

This is fine (first-world-problems, amirite?), but I would
like to experiment with an alternative configuration.
Because I am lazy.

I will try the setting to automatically discard non-member
posts, with the oversight that the moderator receives a
copy of the discarded message.

Discard means no notification to the sender and no further
processing.  This also means that by default, I only need
to act on a legitimate false positive message.  Spam requires
no action with this default, whereas it required a set of
actions with the Hold default.

Other options are Reject, which notifies the sender that
their message was rejected (via the mail bounce mechanism).
The Reject option will cause backscatter, so I do not wish
to try it.  Backscatter is the addition of unwanted or
unnecessary internet traffic due to some methods of processing
spam.

So what do you all think of that?

Mark