Re: CFPs and con invitations on the list

[Matthias Andree <matthias.andree () gmx de>]

Am 25.03.2010 15:24, schrieb Josh Bressers:
[...]
> I think those headers bring up a good point. This is comparable to the old
> days of cross posting to lots of gropus on usenet (for you young folks, it
> was frowned upon). Perhaps we encourage messages DIRECTED at oss-security,
> rather than shotgun announcements.

Which will then be disassembled into a series of mail-merged individual
invitations (aka. multi-posting, which was worse than cross-posting)?  If that
would happen, I'd object.  I also object to "badly cross-posted" invitations.

> 4) Approve posts from list memebers who've been on the list for > 1 month.
>     (I suspect this is the best solution)

A "List member[...]" might be a lurker, might be an occasional contributor, or a
regular contributor.  As a pointed question: Would you allow spammers to dump
their UCE here if they only were subscribers for four weeks?

More seriously, what relevance has the duration of a subscription?  My answer
is: none whatsoever.  There simply isn't any merit in being subscribed alone.
I find that this criterion, while objective, says nothing about contributions of
the subscriber to the list, and is therefore not useful.

I acknowledge that finding objective criteria is hard, but #4 is IMO just a very
bad loophole.

FWIW, I'm getting spamvertisements for conferences directed at me personally,
and I find that offensive and it should be a reason to prohibit the conference
altogether, so as to have a real incentive not to spam.

At the very least, conference advertisements, if allowed in moderation, should
be tagged so that people can automatically filter them. Filter instructions
could then be on the list's accompanying homepage.

-- 
Matthias Andree