[aclug-L] A better list server?

[Carl D Cravens <raven@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Dale W Hodge wrote:

> Well, Clint beat me to the punch on unsubscribing him.  The guy only
> subscribed so he could spam us.  Unfortunately, there's no way to
> prevent someone from doing just that, short of making the lists
> totally moderated. If the problems worsen, we may have to consider
> just that. :-(

Well, if we could get some Perl coders interested in hacking on
Firehawk...  my wife's pet project for three years, and she thinks she's
ready to let someone else look at the code.

I've been running mailing lists on the Firehawk list server for over two
years now and we don't get spam.  We get lots of spam aimed at our lists,
but none of it gets through.  Turning on the proper options deals with
this..

1) Only subscribers can post.  The software allows for users to specify
   alternate email addresses that they post from, so they can subscribe
   with one address and post from many.

2) The first message (or N messages) from a subscriber is moderated.
   After having the required number of posts approved, the user is no
   longer moderated.

3) Each user may post only N messages a day before further messages are
   held for moderation.  (Not so much spam prevention as harassment and
   runaway process prevention.)

Even if someone subscribes in order to send junk mail, that junk mail will
get held for moderation unless the user has posted before and been
approved.

Firehawk also manages 95% of all bounce messages, auto-unsubscribing users
whose accounts no longer accept mail.

It supports sub-topics... instead of all these different lists for ACLUG,
you could have one list with selectable sub-topics, but only one set of
settings for each user and one list configuration for all the topics.

And it does a whole lot more.

My wife's currently rewriting the software to use a mysql back-end for
efficiency.  (The user database is updated every time a message is
posted.)  The new version also supports full-blown web-based reading and
posting (for those who don't like email lists).

--
Carl D Cravens (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
You can tell the character of a man by the friends he keeps.
   -Dr. Ed Cole

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