[BALUG-Admin] BALUG lists ... work-around text: blank body with command in Subject: header, & anti-spam

[Michael Paoli]

So, configurations updated and mailman restarted, results look good,
typical changed bit in text involves placing * right after mention of
[Ss]ubject (and also if suitably relevant and present, body), and then
very shortly after that bit of text, adding:
*At the present time, our anti-spam rejects if body is empty/blank
(after stripping out images, etc.), so, as work-around, if the body
would otherwise cause such rejection, include in the body just the word
"end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself.

E.g. in the current text response to the help command:
this site.  A command can be in the subject* line or in the body* of the
message.
*At the present time, our anti-spam rejects if body is empty/blank
(after stripping out images, etc.), so, as work-around, if the body
would otherwise cause such rejection, include in the body just the word
"end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself.

Some other minor adjustments also done to have text reasonably flow
around the added bits.  E.g.:

--- /usr/share/mailman/en/verify.txt    2016-09-14 23:04:19.000000000 -0700
+++ verify.txt  2017-07-19 22:57:07.000000000 -0700
@@ -3,7 +3,13 @@
  We have received a request%(remote)s for subscription of your email
  address, "%(email)s", to the %(listaddr)s mailing list.  To confirm
  that you want to be added to this mailing list, simply reply to this
-message, keeping the Subject: header intact.  Or visit this web page:
+message, keeping the Subject*: header intact.
+*At the present time, our anti-spam rejects if body is empty/blank
+(after stripping out images, etc.), so, as work-around, if the body
+would otherwise cause such rejection, include in the body just the word
+"end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself.
+
+Or visit this web page:

      %(confirmurl)s

And, anti-spam looking quite good.  Quite few false-positives (at least
after some earlier configuration adjustments).  Whole lot 'o crud
spam being rejected ...
Looking at logs, 5,384 rejections (but note that some of those are
soft-fails, e.g. greylisting) in 10d 10h 34m 3s,
that gives us:
about 21.5 rejections/hr., or about a rejection every 2.8 minutes.
Don't think I've seen a single actual spam email make it through ... yet.

So, thus far, pretty dang good results on the anti-spam.

5384
2017-07-19 23:13:57
2017-07-09 12:39:54
         10 10:34:03
5384/(24*3600*10+3600*10+34*60+3)*3600
21.48722400151655740800
1/(5384/(24*3600*10+3600*10+34*60+3)*60)
2.79235698365527488942

> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Admin] BALUG lists ... blank body with command  
> in Subject: header, ... subscriber options
> Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2017 22:15:55 -0700

> So, bit of searching (find(1)) and such ...
> looks like those relevant texts are configurable under:
> /etc/mailman/en/ - at least for list installed/configured to only
> use English (I'm not planning to use nor translate nor translate
> changes to other languages).  And looks like they start out, at
> least initially (and thus far on this host/installation) with
> same set of files in each (at least same names and contents -
> looks like mtimes probably also all match).  So ... likely just
> need to suitably edit the applicable ones under /etc/mailman/en/
> and probably give mailman a restart, do a bit more testing to
> confirm, etc., and that should cover that.