Re: Mail sent to midcom (fwd)

[Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu>]

> The mailing list as delivered unto us by the IETF administrator
> has a preset policy of holding email from someone not on the
> mailing list until it's released by an administrator.  We can
> change that if people feel sufficiently strongly.  

For me it's completely UNacceptable to expect people to subscribe to an
IETF mailing list in order to post to it.  MIDCOM is an example of
a group that could potentially have huge effects on other protocols;
it's important for such a group to be able to accept input from,
and have discussions with other groups, without expecting all of the
participants to subscribe to that group.

However, I have no problem with having postings from non-subscribers 
screened by a moderator - PROVIDED that the moderator forwards anything 
to the list that could POSSIBLY be legitimate for the list, and that
he/she does so in a timely fashion.  The role of the moderator in this
case is to act as an intelligent spam filter, not to influence the 
discussion.  

(This might actually work better if the poster does not get a message
saying that his posting is being held for screening.)

There's another subtlety here - lists that filter mail from non-subscribers
penalize folks who use subaddressing for incoming list mail, since they
don't post from the same address at which they are subscribed.  Ideally,
lists should not consider subaddresses when comparing a contributor's
address against the list of subscribers.  Failing that, it's helpful if
a subscriber can get his "From" address registered as one for which there
is special permission to post.

Keith