[BioPython] Promotional Ads

[Chris Dagdigian]

These complaints should have been sent to the OBF sysadmin team 
(root-l@bioperl.org) so we could have responded. I can't subsribe to 
every one of our 35+ lists you know :)

I've set up more restrictive anti-spam rules within Mailman for both the 
bioperl and biojava mailing lists. The lists still allow outsiders to 
post but we hold-for-moderation all emails that are not mime-encoded as 
text/plain and any emails that include attachments. This works very well 
but places an administrative burden on our volunteer mailing list 
moderators.

The BioMoby list has taken this even futher-- they have elected to close 
the list to outside posters -- all posts from non-members are held for 
moderation and the moby list members have stepped forward to handle the 
moderation tasks.

We also subscribe on a server level to the http:///mail-abuse.org RBL+ 
blackhole list which allows us to refuse inbound SMTP connections from 
IP addresses of known spammers or open relays. Sadly this filter has not 
worked since we changed IP addresses a few weeks ago. We have an open 
ticket in with mail-abuse.org to update their databse with our new IP.

So- please discuss amongst yourselves what additional steps you'd like 
to take. I'd recommend trying to block all attachments and non-plaintext 
emails before  taking the more drastic step of taking the list private. 
It would also help greatly if there were a member or two on this list 
who would volunteer to join our mailteam to help with the increased 
moderation duties.

Regarding jitterbug -- you can elect to disable the email-based bug 
reporting or you can switch to Bugzilla as bioperl did. In fact I think 
Jeff has already set up bugzilla for biopython?

Regards,
Chris
Open-Bio.org



Danny Yoo wrote:

>On 22 Oct 2002, David A. Jewell wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Dr. Singh sentiments are my own and I would very much appreciate efforts
>>in securing the Bio-python server from what appears to be frequent
>>hacks.
>>    
>>
>
>
>How about if the biopython lists are restricted so that only subscribers
>can post?  This is the approach that many other Mailman mailing lists have
>taken to prevent junk mail from flooding the list.
>
>It's also extraordinarily disheartening when there's more spam than actual
>bug reports in Jitterbug; I personally almost despise getting mail from
>biopython-dev simply because it's spam for the most part!
>
>
>The mailing lists on mail.python.org also have a spam filter that seems to
>be fairly effective.  Someone may want to contact the mail.python.org
>administrator and see if a similar system can be set up for Biopython.org.
>  
>