[Scribus] Spam on this list!

[Craig Ringer]

Steve Herrick wrote:
> On 7/22/07, Craig Ringer <craig at postnewspapers.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> Turing tests like captchas are the only real way around this, and even
>> they are incompletely effective (some bots are so good they can solve
>> ones some humans can't - and let's not even talk about vision
>> diabilities etc).
> 
> On the lists and sites I run, I don't hesitate to delete addresses
> from .ua and .ru addresses

... which on some lists may make sense, but it's less sensible here. The
 Scribus list has a worldwide audience and it's unlikely to be safe to
assume that addresses from oft-abused ccTLDs are not legitimate in this
case.

OK, so the Scribus list has only had 3 users from .ru and none from .ua
since I last truncated my archives in April 2006, but that's 3 people
it's not really cool to bump off.

In any case, this was a .de address . Spammers know that some people
will accept the false positives and filter out .ru, so they'll prefer
other addresses.

> and anything that looks fake. In
> borderline cases, I write people and ask them about their interest in
> the list. It takes a bit more effort, but it's the only thing that
> works.

This works really well if you have moderated subscription enabled, and
the list is small enough that managing it isn't prohibitive. I don't
know whether it'd be possible for the Scribus list, but at this point
IMO spam just isn't enough of a problem for it to be worth the fuss.

--
Craig Ringer