response 25 of 40:

Feb 26 18:27 UTC 2010

Whitelisting is not necessary.  Grex should simply do away with the 
mail server altogether.  It is clearly not necessary for Grex to offer 
free email anymore.

response 27 of 40:

Feb 26 22:47 UTC 2010

Okay, so what would be some services to offer that Grex users would
appreciate?  

In my opinion, even though e-mail is available elsewhere, it is still
very handy for communicating with staff and others when on Grex without
the need to go elsewhere to send a message. Having people go elsewhere
to do things is apt to mean they get in the habit of not using Grex for
anything.

response 29 of 40:

Feb 27 00:30 UTC 2010

I'd be curious to know why grex NEEDS to offer email.  m-net survived
for several years without offering email and few people complained.  I
brought it back up a few weeks ago and so far over 60 people have signed
up, so there is a desire to have an address, but I don't think it's an
essential component.  That said, I agree it's a nice thing to offer and
that's why I've offered to host email similarly.  veek has offered
another method, which while it's not the method I'd use, I can't fault
him for wanting to do it that way and it's another option.

response 31 of 40:

Feb 27 06:28 UTC 2010

1. Guy who wants to learn UNIX, check mail headers, telnet port 25, 
type commands, and try the various Postfix commands.
2. DIY guy has a bunch of friends in the DIY community that he wants to 
keep in touch with BUT doesn't want to create a Yahoo account - he 
invites them over to Grex and uses party, bbs and.. grex mail to keep 
in touch.
3. Free publicity for Grex. People exchange email ID's all the time and 
that clues other ppl in.

response 33 of 40:

Mar 3 13:02 UTC 2010

resp:32 That's simply not true.  If a foreign power wants to get root on
grex and read the emails of one of their nationals, they'll find a way.

The reality is that Grex doesn't *need* to offer email.  But we've managed
to scale it back enough that it's a relatively low-bandwidth thing and I'm
not sure I see any harm in having it available as an opt-in (which it
basically is now).  As far as whitelists go, I believe the current spam
assassin configuration already allows for that, no?

response 35 of 40:

Mar 4 03:57 UTC 2010

Yes, I'm using a short whitelist right now with spamassassin.  And a
very short blacklist.  As to whether it works, it's hard to say right
now.  I still get spam which spamassassin almost always throws out
correctly.

response 37 of 40:

Mar 5 15:06 UTC 2010

I don't think that we want a system-wide whitelist or a system-wide
blacklist.  It'd be better to leave what gets tossed out to the
individual.  That's just my opinion, though.

Most corporate spam software just puts potential spam in a separate
location and informs the user so they can decide if it's a false
positive.  If the user doesn't rescue the message in a certain amount of
time, it gets nuked.  Of course, I have no idea how much egregious spam
is deleted before that point.

Definitely the web pages need updating (it's a never-ending job, I'm
sure).  We need to have them be in line with what we are offering and
with our policies.  Making it easier for new users to find what they
need would help if it isn't obvious already.

Having easy to follow instructions for beginners is a great idea.  I
think Grex offered some sort of help manual in the past.  Perhaps, in
addition to the web page updates, that manual needs updating?

Here's an on-line spamassassin configuration generator for users:

   http://www.yrex.com/spam/spamconfig.php 

I don't know how useful that is, but it might help (or it might let
people shoot themselves in the foot more easily).

Oh, and from what I've read about spamassassin whitelisting, it doesn't
reject e-mails from people not in the whitelist per se, it gives e-mails
from the whitelist addresses a very low spam score (-100) so that it is
unlikely they will be marked as spam.  Thus, e-mails still go through
the usual spam filtering.

response 39 of 40:

Mar 6 01:29 UTC 2010

Heh.  Read the man page.  Of course the word assassin is in there too, so
that conjures up other images, I'm sure.