I am new to Groups.IO but have operated lists on many services over the
last twenty-five years.? I would like to offer a couple of
additional thoughts on this subject because I believe the problem is
being made much more difficult than it actually is.
The basic comment starting this thread was the suggestion that users
should be encouraged to never mark a group distribution item as
spam.? The concept is simple, and if you understand how the group
distribution system works and how the spam identification process works
at most ISPs, you will understand why none of your users should ever mark
group distribution messages as spam.? List administrators must
encourage their members to report unwanted messages to them so management
action can be taken at the list level.
Let me start by explaining that most of the ISPs do not do their own spam
identification.? The majority of them, and almost all of the larger
services (AOL is the prime example), use the spam identification services
specifically set up to track the source of spam.? The spam
identifiers (like SPAMCOP and many others) get their raw data from the
ISPs when users mark a message as spam.? The problem that has
evolved is that some of the spam identification sources (unfortunately
some of the ones used by many ISPs) collect the forwarding mail server IP
address as the source of the item marked as spam.? Many of these
services are not sophisticated enough to know the difference between the
actual source of the message and the server that relayed the message onto
the Internet.
Clearly, when the spam identification services can not distinguish
between the source IP and the distribution IP, all of those messages
distributed by companies like Groups.IO look like they are all coming
from the distribution IP.? This results in the distribution IP
address being added to the spam list and all of a sudden many lists on
Groups.IO which are all supported by the same distribution server are
impacted because ISPs (like AOL) will not accept any messages distributed
by the Groups.IO distribution servers.
In summary, because of the unsophisticated analysis performed by many of
the spam identification services, the spam feedback process does not work
correctly for messages distributed by list service providers like
Groups.IO (I use HostMonster for many of my commercial lists and have the
same problem there when users.of other lists start marking messages as
spam and it is the distribution server that gets listed as the spam
source instead of the primary mail server where the message
originated.).
The solution is to insure that only users who want to be on
a list are included (use verification messages or sign-up forms), and
educate your users (and everyone else you can) that messages distributed
by list servers (like Groups.IO) SHOULD NEVER BE MARKED AS SPAM (I think
that was the original suggestion.? Hopefully all now understand
why.).? The task of insuring that none of their customers are
spamming unfortunately falls back on the list service provider (like
Groups.IO) since they must fight the battle of keeping their server IPs
off of the spammer lists.? Good list providers are actively
identifying which list distributions are being tagged as spam and
selectively culling their customers who do not police
themselves.
The bottom-line is that we as list administrators must work
together to manage this problem.? If we each insure that our lists
only contain recipients that want to be included, and if we make it clear
to our members that unwanted messages distributed by the list are to be
reported to the list administrator or moderator rather than marked as
SPAM, then the whole process will work better for all of us.
I suggest that each list administrator read this message twice.?
;-)
Regards,
- JimF
