David's Computer Stuff Journal: Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?

Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?

David N. Welton — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:26:00 -0800

Here's a question that has bugged me for a while, and to which I've never found a satisfactory answer.

How do people handle mailing list moderation when they have spam filters active? For instance, I get a lot of spam in the moderation queues for the Apache mailing lists I moderate. Sometimes gmail flags it as spam, and I can't quite say it's wrong... I mean the body of the email that's help up for moderation is often full of spam words. But the moderation message itself isn't really spam. I'm afraid of confusing the filter if I let it through. I guess this is where an open source system might be better, as you could simply put a rule in saying "if it's a moderation email, don't even bother looking at the keywords". Gmail's awfully convenient though... anyone else out there with the same problem?

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Ermar

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:43:16 -0800

Just the same problem. I get irritated coz it’s time consuming for me to delete them.

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Josh

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:50:03 -0800

Same problem. I whitelist moderation mails.

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Simon

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:04:27 -0800

Same problem different place.

In Thunderbird (really icedove) I didn't mark moderation emails as spam, and thus the Bayesian filter got confused and let through too much spam.

Thunderbird's filter didn't get upset when I then reset the filter, and started marking moderation messages with spam as spam. And it doesn't mark every such request as spam, so it is discernible with Bayesian filters, although that might depend on the proportion of spam to ham, and the filter in use.

Mailman will do an email notification of pending, and a web based moderation handling, which works well.

Sounds like more automated filtering is needed on the mailing list server.

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Gina

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:25:08 -0800

Everyday, when I open my mailbox it's full of spam mails. I don't bother reading them. I just check them all and hit delete. I get irritated, though, when there are hundreds to delete. It's such a waste of time.

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by visitor

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:43:39 -0800

Trusted networks in spam filter configuration

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Justin Mason

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:32:31 -0800

ah, Markdown, my old enemy. ;) that should be

whitelist_from *-reject-*@*.apache.org

whitelist_from *-reject-*@apache.org

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Eliana

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:37:43 -0800

I've had the same experience. Sometimes non-spam mail get into my spam. there are important messages that I miss. so, I always have to screen my spam folder instead of emptying it right away.

"Mailing list moderation and anti-spam filters?" by Jukka Zitting

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:29:52 -0800

I actually worry more about marking such moderation requests as spam as then the spam filter might start considering the fixed text of the moderation request as common spam content. This way even valid moderation requests might start being labeled as spam.

Thus I always use the "Delete" button instead of "Report Spam" for moderation requests that I don't want to approve.

In a perfect world a spam filter would catch all spam already before it reaches the mailing list and the moderation queue...