[thesite] FW: [thalist] Darling

John Handelaar john at userfrenzy.com
Mon Apr 29 09:18:01 CDT 2002


> -----Original Message-----
> From: thesite-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thesite-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of aardvark
> Sent: 29 April 2002 15:05
> To: thesite at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: RE: [thesite] FW: [thalist] Darling
> >
> > From: "John Handelaar" <john at userfrenzy.com>
> > >
> > > i'm still in favor of holding all posts with attachments, as well as
> > > all non-plain- text posts...
> >
> > Yeah, but the reason we've got what we have now is that
> > holding all attachments also holds attachments of MIME type
> > text/plain.  IIRC that was a bleedin nightmare because
> > of the volume of legit posts getting stopped.
>
> 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 :-(

> > 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.

[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...]

> > Clearly at the moment we've got something annoying, but
> > not remotely dangerous.  Mich, Matt, myself and I guess
> > whoever else is covering (not getting into that one here)
> > are adding match phrases as fast as possible (I caught the
> > ones matching '* great a flash *' the other day, for
> > example) but as Mich says the virus is too random to catch
> > in that way.
>
> here's a question:
>
> 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?

> 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.

------------------------------------------
John Handelaar

T +44 20 7209 4117       M +44 7930 681789
F +44 870 169 7657   E john at userfrenzy.com
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