[SGVLUG] List Issues.

[Michael Proctor-Smith]

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Emerson, Tom (*IC)
<Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com> wrote:
>> -----Original Message----- of Michael Proctor-Smith
>> On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Emerson, Tom (*IC)
>> <Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> >  wouldn't it
>> > help to put a spam filter in FRONT of the moderation queue
>>
>> It was more then 46K when I stopped deleting 1K at a time I
>> have to figure out how to use xargs.
>
> [hold that thought...]
>
>> ... Anyway the problem is
>> that about 5 real messages made the moderation queue, in the
>> year that I would check on the queue, so I stopped checking.
>
> I suspect those were from members who were auto-bounced due to delivery
> failures -- I'm pretty sure my other address died because of that -- not
> that you would remember, but do you recall if any of those "real"
> messages were from prospective list members who simply hadn't [yet]
> joined?
>
>> Until spam makes it to the list I don't really want to waste
>> the cpu cycles on spam filtering sense mailman does it pretty
>> well(by only letting members post to the list).
>
> You might want to maintain a list of people who have joined and only
> delete them when they explicitly remove themselves from the list vs.
> auto-bounced by mailman -- your pre-filter would be "not in this list"
> [sure, I know mailman is doing that already, but in this case you only
> "waste" cycles when a legit member gets bounced and they post -- anyone
> else gets trashed by you doing the check instead of mailman.
>
>  I have to
>> google on just automatically trashing messages the are in queue.
>
> Ironically, it turns up this page:
>
>   http://imss.caltech.edu/cms.php?op=wiki&wiki_op=view&id=312
>
> [see the last FAQ item -- though this applies to items marked as spam by
> an external checker, i.e., spamassassin, and isn't recommended due to
> the possibility of deleteing false positives, with a hit rate of 5
> /legit/ non-subscriber messages per year, I don't think you'll need to
> worry about FP's]
>
> A little further down the search results, I see:
>
>
> http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/email/mailing-lists/mm-moderation.ht
> ml
>
> And the last item there reads:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> *Automatic Deletion of Messages Pending Review*
>
> The configuration of some Mailman mailing lists will cause some messages
> to those lists to be held for review by the list administrator/list
> moderator. [...]
>
> Mailman can be configured to automatically purge messages pending
> approval after a specific number of days. To set the number of days
> Mailman will hold your messages:
>
>   1. Access the list administration web site
>   2. [enter your list password]
>
>   3. Under General Options, scroll down to Discard held messages older
> than this number of days.
>
>   4. Enter the number of days Mailman is to hold messages pending
> approval (enter 0 for no automatic discarding of messages). If set to 0
> messages will be held for approval until 21 days have passed.
>
>   5. [Submit]
>
> Messages that are pending moderation for 21 days will be deleted
> automatically from the list of held messages. This purge of older
> messages prevents the list pending message queues from becoming so large
> they affect system performance.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
>> by the way there is still problem with the queue that
>> accordingly to the Mailman FAQ should fix its self but my
>> letting it go to long may have caused problems.
>
> Yeah -- that is so important they repeated the last paragraph with
> slightly different wording:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----Allowing these messages to accumulate on the mailing list server
> negatively affects the performance for all lists on the server. To
> prevent neglected lists from causing problems for the list system as a
> whole, messages that have been held pending review for 21 or more days
> will be deleted.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> So apparently they are doing something at an even higher level than
> mailman to purge "old" messages, and by virtue of the fact that you
> haven't set this option via the web interface as described above,
> perhaps this is a recent enhancement to mailman?  [and we're not
> "current"]  (or it wasn't obvious that this setting would have that
> effect?]
>
Yes I found these setting tonight and am in the process of updating.