ibiblio services/changes announcement list

[Cristóbal Palmer <cmpalmer AT metalab.unc.edu>]

Dear ibiblians,

We're pleased to announce that we have added software called
spamassassin to the machine powering lists.ibiblio.org. This means
that you, as list administrators, now have the power to severely cut
down on the volume of junk you have to sift through in your moderation
queue!

We've enabled this junk filtering on an opt-in basis. To take
advantage of this filtering for your list you'll want to visit the
"Privacy options > Spam filters" section of the mailman administrative
interface. Substitute the exact name of your list for the word
LISTNAME in the link below to go straight to the appropriate setting:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/admin/LISTNAME/?VARHELP=privacy/spam/header_filter_rules

Again, the link above will only work properly if you substitute the
exact name of your list for the word "LISTNAME". You can also browse
to the right setting by going to
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/admin/LISTNAME, where LISTNAME is the
name of your list, and clicking first on "Privacy options" and then
the subheading "Spam filters". Regardless, you will be prompted for
your list administration password.

Once you're there, you'll want to put the following text (without the
quotes) in the box: "^X-Spam-Status: Yes", and set the action to
"Hold" to begin with. It should look like this:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2410/2163012094_69dbba6b99_o.png

Please note that we recommend you set this to "Hold" messages at
first. Once you're confident that legitimate mail is not being held in
the moderation queue as junk, you can go back and reset this to
"Discard" instead. Setting to "Discard" will mean that the mailman
software will silently ignore any messages that have been tagged as
junk by the spamassassin software. Be warned that if legitimate mail
gets tagged as junk, you'll never hear about it.

Please do NOT set mailman to "Reject" mail. Again setting to "Reject"
is a BAD idea, since this will generate outbound mail to the person
that mailman thinks sent the mail, which often is not the real
sender. Basically this results in junk getting sent to innocent
bystanders, so do NOT do it.

We're very happy to be able to bring you this new software. We hope it
makes being a lists.ibiblio.org list administrator a much better
experience in 2008.

Cheers!
-- 
Cristóbal Palmer
ibiblio.org systems administrator