Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote some months ago:
> If "reject" from the mailing list means
the sender gets a 5xx error
> during his SMTP session that is trying to deliver the message to "us",
> then "reject" is the better action.
> If "reject" from the mailing list means
that the sender's SMTP session
> succeeds (possibly before the mailing list manager even sees the
> message) and later a bounce message is sent to the purported sender,
> then "discard" is the better action for exactly the reason brion states.
> If I had to guess, I'd guess the latter case
is the situation for this
> list because I trust the Wikimedia employees know what they're doing.
:) Correct.
SMTP delivery succeeds. The message then gets passed
into Mailman, who
decides "oh I don't really want this" and sends back a "Dear
so-and-so
you're not allowed to post to this list, here's a copy of the spam
message that was sent with your spoofed address" to fill up random
peoples' inboxes.
Thus... we turn off rejection to save you spam debris
and to save our
servers from having to send out the spam debris.
If we could have it only send "sorry" mails
on non-spam mails, that
probably would be nice. Hopefully some day we can get there. :)
As spam is the current topic of another thread, I'll warm
that up once again.
As I had mentioned, e. g. KDE balances spam debris vs.
usability in a different way and they survive socially as
well as technically.
But, to be more productive: If Wikimedia mailing lists
were set up so that mails from non-members would need (si-
lent) moderators' approval, I'd volunteer for those queues.
Tim