The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Steve Shipway <address@concealed>]

>those who run mailing lists with one of the various Send scenarios
>that use moderation, or those who run mailing lists that reject messages
>from non-subscribers and send a rejection message to the sender, have
>you ever had your mail server end up on a blacklist because of this?

This is something that concerns us, but we avoid it pretty well by having a 
very good spam filter on our mail gateway.  We have set up 3 tiers of spam -- 
definitely, probably, and possibly.  The first is deleted for everyone, the 
second quarantined and the third tagged and delivered.  However, for our list 
server, all three are deleted.  

As a result, very few (if any) spams get through to the list and result in a 
quarantine/rejection message going back to the purported sender, and we have 
never been blacklisted as a result of list backscatter.

We also have configured Sympa so that spam tagged messages coming in are 
silently rejected.

Of course, if you do not have a spam filter in front of your list server, or 
if you cannot set a lower reject threshold for your list server than for 
normal users, this may be an issue.

>Can I prevent moderated lists from sending a "Message distribution"
>message when a message is received, and then another one when a
>moderator rejects the message?

You can definitely do this.  When you reject a message, there is the 'quiet' 
option which can be given to suppress the rejection notification - in the web 
interface, it is a checkbox, and via the email interface it is (I think) a 
suffix to the message of 'quiet'.  The ontification message of being held for 
moderation can again be suppressed by adding the ',quiet' suffix to the 
scenario outcome.

Steve

Steve Shipway
University of Auckland ITS
UNIX Systems Design Lead
address@concealed
Ph: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86487