Re: CFPs and con invitations on the list

[Solar Designer <solar () openwall com>]

Hi Josh,

Thank you for speaking up.

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 09:52:22AM -0400, Josh Bressers wrote:
> ----- "Solar Designer" <solar () openwall com> wrote:
> > That said, I won't be approving any further "multi-conference" stuff, but
> > I've just approved a HITB announcement...  BTW, Hafez Kamal has been a
> > subscriber to oss-security for a while.
>
> I agree with this decision. I don't see such announcements adding any value
> here, and probably just increase the noise level.

I find the above confusing.  First you say that you agree with my
decision to be selective about the announcements (reject some, approve
some others), then you state that "such announcements" (all of them?)
don't add any value in your opinion.  Please clarify.

> Unless someone has a compelling argument FOR letting these though,

So far, I only got a few "I don't mind to receive these" responses
(off-list).  I don't think these count as "compelling arguments", yet I
am also not very comfortable about rejecting messages that some people
are sending and others don't mind receiving.

> I think this is an acceptable policy.

Please define the policy first.

I think that it's not great to just do nothing about these postings -
neither approve nor reject them, letting them get bounced to the senders
with an automated message stating that "the list moderators for the
oss-security list have failed to act on your post."  It is best to
either approve or explicitly reject messages, providing an explanation
to the sender.

As you have noticed, I've approved two additional HITB postings recently -
one about the videos (somewhat valuable), the other a correction (of
little value).  I think the videos posting was in fact desirable, and it
felt illogical to reject these after having approved the Agenda posting.

Now we have the following in the moderation queue:

Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:13:06 +0100
From: Jonathan Brossard <endrazine () gmail com>
To: bugtraq () securityfocus com, full-disclosure () lists grok org uk,
 darklab () lists darklab org, droit-net () cru fr,
 focus-apple () securityfocus com, focus-linux () securityfocus com,
 focus-ids () securityfocus com, framework () spool metasploit com,
 misc () openbsd-france org, oss-security () lists openwall com,
 owasp-all () lists owasp org, tmplab () lists tmplab org,
 webappsec () securityfocus com, websecurity () webappsec org,
 Organization team for Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 <hes2010-orga () lists hackitoergosum org>,
 Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 - Call For Paper address <hes2010-cfp () lists hackitoergosum org>
Subject: Hackito Ergo Sum Conference (Paris 8-10 April 2010) : Schedule

Some of the talk topics they're announcing are quite curious and
relevant, in my opinion.  Jonathan Brossard has been on the oss-security
list for some months.

I guess you don't want this approved - at least, you're not doing that.
If so, I'd appreciate it if you help us define a policy and explicitly
reject this posting according to that.  Or should we approve it?  Or do
you want us to not get distracted to this topic, continuing to ignore it
(as being of little relevance to the purpose of oss-security)?

Thanks again,

Alexander