"Message has a suspicious header"

[Pete Batard]

On 2012.01.25 14:11, David Woodhouse wrote:
>> Well, my issue here is that other mailing lists seem to take the
>> approach of "approve first, then let the moderator delete if needed",
>> rather than "reject first, then let the moderator approve it if needed".
>
> That doesn't make much sense to me. Once the message has been accepted
> and sent out to all the subscribers, it *cannot* be deleted.
>
> The only thing you could do is remove it from the archives... which
> would just mean that the archives don't reflect the reality of what
> actually got sent out.

Well, my concern is indeed with the public archives and immediate 
feedback, which, by being permissive, which may result in a few unwanted 
messages finding their way to end users (but which can then be delete 
from public archives), unless it becomes too much of a problem, in which 
case a more restrictive rule can be applied.

The risk is always that a rule aimed at preventing reprehensible usage 
is abused by the people in control, and is used beyond the scope that it 
was envisioned for, especially if the majority has no means of checking 
whether the people in control abuse the rule or not.

If too many restrictions are in place, and nobody can find out on what 
is actually being filtered, who's to say if the moderators aren't being 
more restrictive than they should? Granted, a "no thread-hijacking" rule 
alone won't get you that far, but again, being permissive by default 
allows for greater transparency, which *generally* is a good thing.

> The *only* possible approach is "hold suspicious stuff for a human to
> look at it, then reject or approve as appropriate", surely?

Another possible approach, since this is a limitation of SMTP, would be 
to modify the SMTP protocol to allow for mail deletion on the recipient 
server, *if* the recipient allows it from specific senders (and if the 
recipient doesn't allow it, they can confirm that SMTP deletion isn't 
abused). Granted, irrelevant for this discussion since not currently 
feasible (if at all).

>> Does that mean that HTML will be rejected by default as well?
>
> No, it means that HTML will be considered suspicious and trapped for a
> human to look at it and make a decision. Personally I reject all HTML on
> my own lists. But the admins of *this* list can do as they see fit.

OK. Thanks for clarifying again.

Regards,

/Pete