[159] in linux-security and linux-alert archive
Reply-To headers.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Uphoff)
Mon Mar 13 19:29:21 1995
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 19:06:11 -0500
From: Jeff Uphoff <juphoff@tarsier.cv.nrao.edu>
To: linux-security@tarsier.cv.nrao.edu
I have disabled generation of the "Reply-To:" headers that, by default,
directed replies to list postings back to the list. Too large a volume
of the messages that Olaf and I have been receiving as moderators is
e-mail that really should be sent directly back to the authors of posts,
such as mail that answers simple questions or decides to "pick nits."
People that simply pounce on the reply key won't saturate the list
without at least thinking about it this way; there are many people on
this list that do not wish to see it become yet another high-volume list
that cannot be kept up with. In the same vein, Olaf and I do not want
to see that happen because it is not what we established the lists for.
When replying to a post from now on, you will have to explicitly CC: the
list into the reply for mail to be sent to it--but before doing that,
ask yourself if this is really something that many hundreds of people
would be interested in reading.
The current size of this security lists are:
749 linux-security
76 linux-security-digest
1138 linux-alert
19 linux-alert-digest
The 825 subscriptions to the "security" lists include addresses from 51
top-level Internet domains, so you're going to have people world-wide
saying: "why didn't he just reply to that in private e-mail?" (As well
as saying: "and why did those brain-dead moderators approve it?" ;-)
Let's also try to keep on-topic with *Linux* security. General UNIX
security topics such as inetd.conf, shadow passwords, traditionally
setuid applications, why /etc/passwd is world-readable, Netscape &
Mosaic, httpd, etc., are *not* Linux-specific; many of these topics have
already been beaten to death on Usenet, in mailing lists, and around the
water cooler--there's no point in our doing it again here.
Examples of Linux-specific security are things like the NFS server (a
good recent example), special system util's that aren't generally found
in other flavors of UNIX or that are customized for Linux, and security
holes and/or decisions in common Linux packages and distributions (I
realize that there's some overlap with setuid, inetd.conf, etc.,
here--so this is often case-by-case for each topic).
I don't like disapproving posts (and I get the feeling that Olaf doesn't
either), but we're going to be more and more frequent (and terse) with
our disapproval replies if the threads keep veering into
non-Linux-specific and/or non-security-related realms. (Those topics
are what the Rutgers mailing-lists are for.) We've been pretty liberal
with our approvals so far, but we're going to be much less so in the
future.
Sorry if that all sounded rude, but we're trying to establish order for
the many people here that really want to see focused discussions. We've
had at least one well-regarded Linuxer (Rik Faith) leave the list
already, and I have a feeling that it's due to the excess traffic,
noise, and drifting of topics. Part of this is our fault as moderators,
and we now aim to correct that.
--Up.
--
Jeff Uphoff - systems/network admin. | juphoff@nrao.edu
National Radio Astronomy Observatory | jeff.uphoff@linux.org
Charlottesville, VA, USA | http://linux.nrao.edu/~juphoff/
