Subject: [Tools-team] FW: W3C tools (resend to right address)

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:16:45 -0700

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Oskoboiny [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 10:18 AM
To: Larry Masinter
Cc: 'Martin Duerst'; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: W3C tools (resend to right address)

* Larry Masinter <[email-masked]> [2004-09-15 22:32-0700]
> The IETF Tools Team was wondering about the mechanism that
> W3C uses to ask for permission to archive email. We will
> suggest (in our requirements for IETF tools) that the IETF
> institute a similar system.
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2002/09/aa/ is very helpful.

Some related pointers:

    admin info:  http://www.w3.org/2002/09/aa/admin
    todo list:   http://www.w3.org/2002/09/aa/todo
    source code: http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2002/caa/

These docs are public, but not linked from the overview page
because there are a few minor security issues I'd like to fix
first.

There are more generic challenge/response systems out there,
which may or may not be a better starting point for a similar
system at the IETF. A couple that come to mind:

    TMDA: http://tmda.net/
    ASK:  http://www.paganini.net/ask/

> Did you keep a permanent database? As a file? In some SQL
> database?  What other information do you keep about email
> addresses?

We keep permanent info on who has given approval, yes. At first I
stored that info in a berkeley DB file, but due to a few issues
that came up recently modified it to use text files in a filesystem
within a certain directory structure. (issues were: DB file grew
too fast with 10k incoming spams/day, and too many processes
contending for a lock on the DB file.)

I considered using SQL instead, but wanted to keep it as low tech
as possible, and wanted it to keep working even if our DB was
offline. SQL would have had other advantages though.

We may keep other info about email addresses in various places,
but nothing specific comes to mind. One thing I think we find
very useful is smartlist's concept of separating "accept lists"
from dist lists, which we have extended to create "master accept
lists" to allow known parties to post to any of our lists whether
they are subscribed or not. A bit more info:

http://www.w3.org/2002/11/spam-filtering#accept

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny     http://www.w3.org/People/Gerald/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)    http://www.w3.org/
tel:+1-613-261-6630             mailto:[email-masked]

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From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:18:51 -0700

Thanks! This is great information, and I think it will be
very helpful when we put together the recommendations for
improvements to IETF tools.

Larry