[GRASSweb-list]spam prevention

[Markus Neteler]

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 06:19:18PM -0700, Chuck Soper wrote:
[...]
> It's exciting for me to get an email from Italy. Everyday I watch 90 
> minutes of the Giro d'Italia on television. I was upset to see 
> Cipollini crash, but I'm glad that Pantani is in the top ten.

:-) I must admit that I don't follow it too much (maybe due to lack
of TV at home).
 
> Also, did you know that Richard Stallman will be speaking in Italy in 
> a few days? http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html
> As you may know, he started GNU:
> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.it.html

Thanks - but Torino is not too close. Recently John maddog Hall was
here in Trento.

BTW: I have "scrambled" at least a bit the email addresses in
the various archives.
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2003-May/005385.html

Maybe I have to update from Mailman 2.0.5 to 2.1, but I hesitate
to modify a production system.
 
> I just looked at my Welcome to the GRASS GIS Users List message and 
> noticed that it came from: "CREN ListProc(tm) Version 8.2" 
> <listproc at baylor.edu>
> This means that Grass GIS uses CREN ListProc rather than GNU Mailman.

Right, but partially only:

- GRASS GIS User: CREN ListProc, run in US (Baylor University)
- grass5, wingrass, statsgrass, sqlgrass, GRASS-de, ....: Mailman,
  run in Italy (ITC-irst).

I have no control over GRASS GIS User, but I have established an
archive of that list in Mailman.
 
> With GNU Mailman it's possible to password protect web archives and 
> allow non-members to search them. Everyone must enter a generic 
> username and password to search the web archives. Example: 
> http://search.lists.apple.com/cocoa-dev

Ah - this is a nice idea.
 
> I believe that both GNU Mailman and CREN ListProc support built-in 
> web-based archiving as well as hooks for external archivers such as 
> MHonArc (Apple uses MHonArc).

Right. Unfortunately my time is limited and I have never tried MHonArc.
That's why we use the Mailman archive. But in fact the spams are increasing
these days I am tired as well to receive them.

 
> The question is: Can ListProc's web archives be password protected 
> and continue to allow public searches?

No idea - I don't know that list manager at Baylor (wrote several times,
but never got a response). Again, the GRASS user list hosted at Baylor
University is totally out of my control. All other GRASS related mailing
lists are hosted here with Mailman 2.0.5.
 
[...]
> By the way, I'm able to connect to 
> http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grassuser/ fine. Thanks.

... which is just the archive while the list runs at Baylor.

I hope the situation is clear now. 
If I knew how to improve the spam protection with little efforts I would do
it. Someone has to educate me :-)

I will now try to add .htaccess/Apache protection as Apple does.

Cheers
 
 Markus