large attachments and non-subscriber postings

From: Alfie Costa (agcosta@gis.net)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 21:41:36 CEST


Somewhere in the last 50 messages the question was brought up whether only
subscribers to this list should be allowed to post here.

Pro: it's a help to novices, or those who don't wish to subscribe to the whole
list.

Con: it's a help to spammers and viruses/mail-worm programs. The list might
even help spread viruses. While there are no reported cases of this happening,
it's possible there are unreported cases. This would be especially hard on
novices who don't understand email. Also spam and viruses consume bandwidth.

It seems that either alternative is hardest on novices.

Compromise: is it possible to allow subscribers to post instantly, and have
non subscribers to post only after being read by a moderator or editor? That
is, if any of the regulars send mail, it goes straight to the list. But if
anyone not on the list posts, (or perhaps if any of the regulars post messages
larger than 20K), the software puts it aside for somebody to approve of later.

A minor drawback of this method is that legitimate posts by non-subscribers
would have to wait till they were passed. And somebody would have to process
the incoming non-subscriber mail -- which we already do, so it's not really any
added work; it'd be less man-hours since only one person would be doing what
many now do.

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