Proposed list charter/AUP change?

Tue Jan 4 18:30:42 UTC 2005

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 09:51:05AM -0800, Bill Nash wrote:
> Spam represents a significant percentage of email traffic, and its 
> delivery is increasingly via trojaned dsl/broadband devices. Even spam 
> delivered from quasi-legitimate sources is usually an abuse of resources 
> that some NSP/ISP is paying for. Discussion of functional spam control at 
> the ISP level, I think, is absolutely on topic for a list of this scope. 
> Please note, that I say 'functional'. Random complaints would obviously 
> not fall into this category.

I don't think spam is considered off-topic because anyone thinks it's
irrelevant, but because it's such a vast category by itself that it
could easily swallow the list whole. There are already many lists
just dealing with spam and/or individual subtopics of it.

I think it's a matter of trying to find a decent balance between the
convenience of rounding up all the relevant topics into one list and
the flexibility of allowing people to opt into the topics they want by
choosing various lists.

Having said that, I think that individual spam-related operational
disruptions, mailbombings which have a significant[*] impact, etc
are appropriate, so long as they don't develop into entire discussions
on the topic of spam as a whole (which would fit better on another list
IMHO).

-c

[*] - Now we can have a sidebar discussion on what constitutes a
significant impact...