Re: Cookin' SPAM

[chrisw@miso.wwa.com (Chris Williams)]

>A proposal for SPAMicide:
>
>A gatekeeper system, where the "post"-processor will kick-out a post from
>anyone not on The Approved List.  These purgatorious posts would be Suspended
>in Gaffa and sent to a select, annointed group of X (20?) people (any
>volunteers?).  If at least Y (4?) of these "gatekeepers" sent it back to a
>special address within Z (24?) hours, the post would be added to L-H and
>r.m.g, and the post's author ID would be added to The Approved List for future
>posts.  If said confirmation did NOT occur within Z hours, the post would be
>sent on to hell (and, in a perfect world, the author would go with it).

   Sounds like a very good idea (except for the problem that the only person
who could do anything about this is the one person known to be too busy.)

   A suggestion for a modified version....

   A modified news server that only carries one group...the un-vetted feed
to love-hounds. 

   Anyone willing to be a part of the moderation group will have newsreading
rights on the group...as long as they have been a subscriber to love-hounds
for a reasonable period of time, to make sure spammers don't join just to
allow spam.

   Any article that is read and accepted is forwarded to the rest of the 
group. Any article that is killed is put into a holding queue.

   If 4 succesive readers kill it, it goes into the bit-bucket.

   This would make sure that good stuff goes out quickly, and bad stuff
is deleted. I'd hate to have a long delay on non-spam just to get rid of
spam.

>The group-moderation handles problems with undue censorship and moderators
>taking vacation.

   Remember, although Stev0 is being really pissy, we owe a *lot* to Bill
Wisner. The entire mailing list is passing through his personal machine,
and he is hosting the new GaffaWeb site and devoting considerable
resources to it.

>Additionally, isn't there a way to determine whether an address is "real"
>(finger?)?  That could be a first step.

   If the address is SMTP-spoofed (as most spam is) the spoofed address
will finger ok. I could send you e-mail from president@whitehouse.gov,
and the finger would work. Also, this would exclude many decent people
who post from behind company firewalls, and everyone unlucky enough
to be on AOL.

>The above system may not be technically feasible, given the list-processor
>software used by "our humble pseudo-moderator".  There are certainly details
>that need to be addressed which are not mentioned above.  Any comments?

   Something is feasible, either through NNTP, mailing to the moderators,
a password protected approval web page or something else. Almost any
active moderation will destroy spammers. Remember, virtually no spammers
*target* love-hounds/rec.music.gaffa. It's just one more list. To date I 
haven't seen any of the spam use the one method that would get around
the current system (no, I won't tell anyone what the weakness is.)