> ietf-secretariat@xxxxxxxx wrote: > > ...we are planning to turn on SpamAssassin on all IETF mail... I have serious concerns about the use of spamassassin to filter IETF mail, but it depends hugely on the details. If the secretariat is just tagging mail, I don't have a big problem with that. If the secretariat is proposing to use spamassassin as a way to implement a few very carefully chosen filters, that's fine, provided those filters are actually reliable indicators that a message is not appropriate for the IETF list. For instance if IESG were to set a policy that all messages are plain English text (I'm speaking hypothetically here), then a filter that excluded other content-types and other languages would be defensible. If IESG were to set a policy that says messages should have valid return addresses, then a filter that checked return addresses for validity would be defensible. In all cases the filters should be well-documented and subject to public review prior to implementation, not something imposed at the whim of the secretariat and/or IESG. If the secretariat is proposing to use SpamAssassin's default filters, or even very many of the filters included in SpamAssassin, I would have serious objections to that. Many of SpamAssassin's criteria are completely without technical justification, and it is not unusual for SpamAssassin to block legitimate mail (as it did in that example I cited a day or two ago). Even if SpamAssassin only blocks one out of one hundred legitimate messages, it is still unreasonable to impose a significant barrier on that one poster. SpamAssassin is not a good judge of what is correct or reasonable, and we have had too much arbitrary censorship already. It's hard enough to contribute usefully to IETF without imposing the additional burden that contributors second-guess SpamAssassin's filters.