[thesite] FW: [thalist] Darling

[aardvark]

> From: "John Handelaar" <john at userfrenzy.com>
> >
> > ok, now you got me confused...
> >
> > what legit post has an attachment of *any* kind?
>
> Weird mail clients which send the body of plain text
> messages as MIME attachments of type text/plain.  Can't
> think of which ones they are atm but they definitely
> exist :-(

GroupWise?  anyway, they shouldn't be posting...

> > > The newer MG mods try to extract plain text from 'rich
> > > text' mails and let them through.
> >
> > i know, but i've never felt that was worth it... it simply allows
> > people to continue to use HTML mail in their regular lives, and
> > since i can't fly all over the world resetting their mail clients, i
> > was kinda hoping our rabid stance might convert 'em on the cheap...
>
> Yeah, but this (and also answering your later question here)
> means that everything which isn't plaintext gets held for
> approval.  At the moment.  And that's a *lot* of listadmin
> time.

no, i'm suggesting HTML email and attachments just get outright
dumped... no holding, no approval, just flush...

i know, i know, people like matt get screwed, but there is a point at
which the inconvenience to everyone else (subbers, admins) gets
so overwhelming that you have to consider ratcheting the spigot
shut a bit...

> [While I 100% agree about HTML mail, I'm not *sure* that
> the conversion process is necessarily our problem, or any
> of our business even.  But that's a digression...]

if it's evolt.org, it's our business...

[...]
> > Which requires more management, approving "legit posts with text
> > attachments" or adding exceptions to the filters?
> >
> > i would suggest that the one requiring more management is
> > probably not the best solution...
>
> Agreed.
>
> I'm assuming it was the latter, else I don't think that
> 'we' would have bothered with adding the new mods.  No?

while i think the new mods are cool, and well-done, i think they've
only opened the door to hassles...

now, if there were bigger hassles before the mods, it certainly
wasn't made clear in real-time... all i know is that after the mods,
there's been a crapload more spam to the list, 'converted' text in
messages, and for a while there was even some wonkey wrapping
and character insertion...

IOW, the fix may have alleviated the stress for a few, but raised it
for the many...

and this isn't anything new, i've argued this point since the
conversion...

> > things that can (and should) outweigh that include the amount of
> > work needed to clean bad posts off the archives, and the aggregate
> > time wasted by subscribers downloading, reading, and deleting bad
> > posts...
>
> We do have the ability to start modding everything.  Prolly
> it would be nice to have a switch which temporarily went
> rabid about MIME types.  But right now (well, with the interface
> which you and I can both see on thechat at the moment since
> it's the same one), it's not there...  so I'm stuck.

what about a switch that instead restricts to subbed members only?

that might be easier...

as it is, we only have it open to non-subbed addresses to handle
for a handful of folks who post from elsewhere... i think that might
affect less people than a switch on mime types (even though we
explicitly state that HTML mail is not allowed, we do, in fact, now
allow it)...