Mailing list sanity restored

[Jonathan Morton]

>Sorry about all the bogus messages.  Unfortunately the list administrator
>Wez is away today, but I've unsubscribed Jeff Koenig from the list, so it
>should get back to normal now.  We'll look into how to stop it happening
>again.

I had an idea - a kind of "flood detection" that's probably inspired 
by IRC experience:

- Any address posting more than N messages (suggest 10) in a single 
time period T (suggest 1 day) is 'flagged' for watching, for that day.

- If, in the space of N further messages from that address, three or 
more messages from a flagged address appear without an intervening 
message from an unflagged address, multiple times, the address is 
blocked.

- The administrator can unblock addresses when the problem has been fixed.

- The administrator can also whitelist addresses to prevent blocking.

The above rules should eliminate the possibility of a legitimate 
human poster being accidentally banned, and would certainly have 
triggered for Mr. Koenig.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------
from:     Jonathan "Chromatix" Morton
mail:     chromi@chromatix.demon.co.uk
website:  http://www.chromatix.uklinux.net/
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