Can you please file the bug in our bugzilla installation? < bugzilla.wikimedia.org> under Wikimedia -> Mailing Lists.

On 1 August 2014 08:39, Cristian Consonni kikkocristian@gmail.com wrote:

Hi all,

(not really sure this is the right place, please redirect me if needed)

Togheter with Effeietsanders I am administering the wikilovesmonuments-l mailing list[0]. This list is receiveing huge amounts of spam messages (quick stat: we are talking about 20 messages per hour).

We have tried to implement some spam filter rules following this[1] (a page which I have edited myself) but basically we were unable to get any effect of sorts.

Here's the two spam filtering rules I have created:

• Rule 1: X-Spam-Score: [+]{2,99}
• Rule 2: X-Spam-Score: [*]{2,99}

I have added both rules with "+" and "*" to be sure, and I have specified the numbers (more or equal than 2 and less or equal than 99) because in my first try the rule with just {2,} (i.e. "more or equal than 2") was not working.

The fact is that the solution didn't work out in the end (we were still holding in our moderation queue lots and lots of messages with an high spam score) and so we are changing the default policy for the list about non-member messages from "Hold" to "Reject" (If somebody can make a case for "Discard" over "Reject" please do so).

This was quite frustrating, but we were unable to fix the problem is some other way. I am sharing this to make sure I wasn't making some sort of stupid mistake in the rules. I would also like to have an opinion about "Reject" vs "Discard" as a policy for non-members messages.

Thank you.

Cristian

[0] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments [1] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists#Fighting_spam_in_mailman

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Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

On 31 July 2014 23:39, Cristian Consonni kikkocristian@gmail.com wrote:

Hi all,

<snip>

The fact is that the solution didn't work out in the end (we were still holding in our moderation queue lots and lots of messages with an high spam score) and so we are changing the default policy for the list about non-member messages from "Hold" to "Reject" (If somebody can make a case for "Discard" over "Reject" please do so).

This was quite frustrating, but we were unable to fix the problem is some other way. I am sharing this to make sure I wasn't making some sort of stupid mistake in the rules. I would also like to have an opinion about "Reject" vs "Discard" as a policy for non-members messages.

"Reject" sends a message back to the originator, thus confirming that the address is a valid one. "Discard" simply discards the message without response. I too moderate a bunch of mailing lists. The amount of spam decreased over time when we stopped using "Reject" and moved strictly to discard. It was not sufficient to just do that - there are other bugzillas with suggestions on how to reduce spam including various filters - but it does make a difference. (I'm away from my usual computer right now so can't give you any links.)

Hope that helps.

Risker/Anne