[svlug] (forw) Post to svlug-announce; my error

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Joe Buck (Joe.Buck at synopsys.COM):

> I'm glad to hear that this was an error: I was puzzled to see a
> rather routine list of security vulnerabilities being posted to
> svlug-announce and was worried that people might think it alarming
> (like there were security holes so severe that everyone must hear and
> act immediately).

I'm glad I explained, then.  Ordinarily, one tries to make list
administration minimal-effort, minimally intrusive, light-touched, and
fade to background as much as possible.  

For the record, (1) a fair amount of spam gets held for review, daily.
That gets discarded (not rejected, for numerous reasons including forged
senders).  If the claimed From: sender seems likely to repeat and seems
not legit (bearing in mind header forgeries), then I set autodiscard for
future posts with that "From:" header.  (2) Legit posters frequently
post from non-subscribed addresses, resulting in such mail being held
for review.  That mail gets approved, and the From: sender autoapproved
for the future (so repeats will go through without delay).  

(3) _All_ postings to the Jobs mailing list are held for review.  This
is a large percentage of my listadmin time, here, as it's increasingly
active, and a sizeable percentage of posters ignore the postings policy.
(I also admin Mailman mailing lists for Smaug, BAFUG, BALUG, and CABAL
-- plus one new majordomo list at BayLISA.) (4) All postings to
svlug-announce are held for review (possibly except for one or two
preapproved posters.)  Aside from spam, most of these turn out to be
offtopic and inappropriate.  As with Jobs, I try to write a polite and
informative explanation of why the post is being returned, suggest a
better place to put it, and stress that the submitter is welcome to
consult officers at lists.svlug.org if he/she feels I might have erred.

MY personal aim is to ruthlessly intercept spam, ensure that member
(legit) mail doesn't even cross my virtual desk to the extent possible,
and make the process transparent, fast, and minimal.  In doing that, I 
answer to the elected officers and am charged with implementing their
policies, which I try to keep current on the Web site's pages on that
subject.  (Fortunately, they are pretty well established, by now.)

There may be other people handling moderator tasks.  (Most SVLUG lists
are _not moderated_, in the overall standard case, and, for those, only
non-subscribed addresses' posts are generally supposed to be held.)  I
get the impression it's probably just me and Paul Reed, who has the
overall listadmin passwords.