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On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Timothy J Luoma wrote:

>> Guys! Can we do *any*thing about this at the mailing list?
>
>Sure, require that only subscribers can post to the list.

This suggestion comes up every time some spam slips through onto these
lists, but there are some clear reasons this is probably a bad idea:

    1.)  Cross-posting:  There are (at last count) 39 NetBSD mailing
lists.  Many messages are of clear interest to more than one list, and
thus messages are often cross-posted among multiple lists.  A
members-only restriction on the lists would cause thread fragmentation,
as each member would get bounced from those lists thehy weren't on
whenever they hit `reply'.

    2.)  Gateways:  Several sites provide local mail-to-news gateways
for the NetBSD lists, which both reduces the amount of work the list
servers have to do, and helps users to keep up with the high volume of
lists like current-users.  If we had a members-only policy, users at
these sites would not be able to post questions to any of our lists.

    3.)  Questions from non-members:  A lot of the NetBSD lists exist
so that users can ask questions about our OS.  It is not odd for a user
to have a question best directed to a list they are not on.  For example,
a user who only uses the mac68k port may have a question best answered in
the more general m68k list, but may not generally be interested in that
list.

    4)  Try-before-you-buy:  I strongly suspect that if your average newbie
has to deal with the volume of current-users or even netbsd-users in order
to get help with an initial install, they are going to go looking for a
penguin instead...

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@unicast.com

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