[vox] gmane

[Ricardo Anguiano]

Peter Jay Salzman <p@dirac.org> writes:

> hi ricardo,
> 
> i usually spend (combined) an hour a day processing spam on lugod.
> on really bad days, it can be up to 2 hours.  i'm not really looking
> forward to increasing this number.

Running a couple of mailing lists myself, I understand not wanting to
increase the list's spam exposure level.  A couple of things to
consider:

1) gmane can be read using the web interface:

        http://news.gmane.org

   the addresses are all (slightly) obfuscated there to avoid
   automated email harvesting.  example:

        http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.announce/86

2) addresses on the nntp feed are usually not obfuscated, unless we
   request it on a per user or mailing list wide level, including
   anything that looks like an email address anywhere in the body.  It
   is actually more than regular obfuscation, but a cryptographic hash
   mapping your actual address to a functional public.gmane.org email
   address, which is spam filtered by gmane using TDMA challenge
   response.  see "mail delivery":
        
        http://gmane.org/tmda.php

   One additional feature which makes reading gmane nicer than reading
   the raw mailing list, IMHO, for some lists: If an article is
   crossposted to gmane.spam.detected it means gmane's spam filters
   think this is spam.  Killfile (or score down) any articles which
   crosspost there and you get spam filtered mail via nntp.

> just a question to probe the issue -- if we were to use a smtp->nntp
> gateway, could we either disable nntp posting completely

Yes.  You can make it so folks trying to post via gmane are denied.
Many lists on gmane are subscriber post only.  Some folks read their
lists on gmane, but have no-mail subscriptions so they can still post
as subscribers.

> or restrict posting via the posting hosts's IP address?

I don't know if this option is supported. It sounds like a management
nightmare though, or at least something I would hate to ask anyone to
try to support.

> if we could somehow restrict posting hosts to a bunch of IP
> addresses of known vox members, then i'll bring it up on
> vox-officers.  it would be kind of cool to have a newsgroup.  :)

It reads like news, but is not usenet as of right now: the gmane.*
heirarchy does not propagate to usenet. The data sits on a server in
Norway.  If you run INN you can receive gmane.* as a normal newsfeed,
which is read only at this point (i beleive).

> but if it's going to be a typical usenet free for all, or if i have
> to spend even more time than i already do implementing spam control,
> then i'd really rather not.

Understood.  Thanks for considering the idea.

-- 
Ricardo Anguiano
http://www.codesourcery.com