SPUG: dealing with HTML on list (was: Independent project)

[Andrew Sweger]

On Mon, 11 Aug 2008, Bill Campbell wrote:

> We use Spamassassin with Mailman, and messages with html content
> consistently get high scores with html-only messages almost
> certain to be forwarded to the moderator(s) for approval.  People
> posting html to the list should be advised that their messages
> may be held for approval, and that can take a while depending on
> how busy the moderator is.  FWIW, while Mailman has an option to
> send a message to the sender when messages are held for
> moderation (off by default), I would not enable this feature as
> it can either give spammers useful information or result in
> blowback to forged From: or Sender: addresses.

This list rejects senders who are not subscribed. And newly subscribed
senders are moderated. I don't think senders are notified when a message
is held for moderation. All in all, spam almost never makes it to this
list and I've never seen a spammer subscribe to the list. Once in a while
I'll get uncaught (unparseable) bounce notifications forwarded to me, but
they have all been spam that managed to slip through Ask's gauntlet.

Turning on the HTML conversion option shouldn't cause any client trouble
for receivers as it would all be converted to text. The biggest problem I
think might be how the HTML will get mangled into text that might not read
very well. I would say I'm in favor of having the list automatically
convert HTML attachments to text (assuming it does so with acceptable
results).

Disclaimer: I'm one of those old farts that still does ALL of his email on
a 80x25 terminal. I'm naturally biased.

-- 
Andrew B. Sweger -- The great thing about multitasking is that several
                                things can go wrong at once.