ietf mailing lists and spam

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

Looking at our statement at
http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/IESG/STATEMENTS/mail-submit-policy.txt

It includes the following:

> 1) It is assumed that messages submitted to a mailing list are
>    categorized by a software filter into two categories:  submissions
>    from subscribers or other known email addresses and submissions from
>    non-subscribers.  Submissions from subscribers or other known email
>    addresses are distributed immediately.  Other submissions must then
>    be made available to a human reviewer for further consideration.
> 
> 2) WG Chairs (and/or some other designated WG member(s)) must
>    review the list of held messages on a regular basis and have the
>    opportunity to approve the distribution of non-spam submissions to
>    the mailing list. Review of such messages should normally take place
>    in a timely matter (i.e., within one business day).

Note, from the above, it would appear that is not acceptable to send
spam to the bit bucket without having a human check first. This seems
problematical.

I.e., all mail fed into namedroppers (and who knows how many other
mailing lists) is run through spamassassin. This is the case for all
mail sent to mailing lists on the server, not just the one mailing
list. rejected mail is not archived or scanned by a human.

Is this reasonable? It would appear to be inconsistent with our
statement.

My take is that the statement may need revising. There has definitely
been some community support for the notion that requiring the
archiving of spam is not acceptable. Should all lists be required to
look through  all rejected "spam" postings? How do we resolve this?

Thomas